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Macfarland,  Charles  S. 
The  infinite  affection 


THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 


Other  books  by  Dr.    Macfarland 


The  Spirit  Christlike 
Jesus  and  the  Prophets 
The  Old  Puritanism  and 

the  New  Age 
Spiritual  Culture  and 

Social  Service 
The  Christian  Ministry 

and  the  Social  Order 
Christian  Unity  at  Work 


The  Infinite  Affection 


4w«/ior  of  ''The  Spirit  Christlike,'"  etc. 


CHARLES   S.^ACFARLAND 


SECOND   EDITION 


BOSTON 

Xlbe  pilgrim  press 

NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 


Published  in  England    by 
JAIVIES  CLARKE  &  CO. 

LONDON 


COPYKIGHT,    1907, 
BY 

CHARLES  S.  MACFARLAND 


THE  PILGRIM  PRESS 
BOSTON 


To  My  Teachers 
at  Tale 


INTRODUCTION  TO   THE  BRITISH  EDITION 
By  Dr.  John  Warschauer,  of  London 

It  is  a  great  pleasure  to  be  given  the  opportunity  of 
writing  for  the  publishers  an  introduction — so  far  as 
the  British  public  is  concerned — to  a  new  volume  by 
one  of  the  most  "rising"  preachers  and  thinkers  in  the 
Congregational  ministry  in  the  United  States.  For 
several  years  past,  many  English  congregations  have 
had  the  privilege  of  listening,  during  the  summer 
months,  to  Dr.  Macfarland's  stimulating  utterances; 
and  the  great  body  of  friends  and  admirers  which  his 
pulpit  gifts  have  won  him  in  this  country  make  it 
altogether  appropriate  that  this  latest  of  his  spir- 
itual messages  should  be  placed  before  English 
readers. 

Still  youthful  in  years.  Dr.  Macfarland  combines, 
in  an  exceptional  degree,  the  erudition  of  the  trained 
scholar  with  the  devotional  temper  of  the  Christian 
prophet,  and  adds  to  this  the  broad,  free  outlook  of 
the  typical  modern  in  theology.  A  Yale  man,  he  is 
intensely  proud  of  his  alma  mater,  which  in  turn  has 
reason  to  be  proud  of  him;  and  while  the  learning 
the  foundations  of  which  he  laid  as  a  student,  and 
later  as  assistant  in  the  theological  and  Biblical  de- 
partments of  that  University,  is  attested  in  his  schol- 
arly volume  on  "Jesus  and  the  Prophets,"  his  gifts  as 
a   spiritual  teacher   were   well   exemplified   in   "The 


INTRODUCTION 

Spirit  Christlike,"  and  will  no  doubt  make  a  still 
wider  ai3peal  through  the  present  work,  which  is  in  a 
very  real  sense  a  preacher's  confession  of  faith — liv- 
ing words  addressed  to  living  men  and  women. 

In  an  age  w^hen  there  is  much  religious  uncertainty, 
when  old  creeds  are  seen  to  stand  in  urgent  need  of 
revision  in  the  light  of  new  knowledge — an  age  of 
manifold  bewilderment  and  perplexity — we  need  the 
preacher  who  strikes  the  positive  note  with  a  convic- 
tion which,  under  all  our  modern  changes,  has  only 
deepened  and  grown  stronger;  the  preacher  who  is 
thoroughly  equipj^ed  with  the  methods  and  results  of 
the  scholarship  of  today,  and  who,  just  because  that 
equipment  is  thorough,  is  as  constructive  as  he  is 
unfettered,  as  reverent  as  he  is  sane,  as  profoundly 
assured  of  the  essential  truth  of  Christianity  as  he  is 
ready  to  acknowledge  Avith  the  utmost  frankness  what 
science,  criticism  and  philosophy  have  taught  us  in 
these  latter  days. 

Among  such  preachers  Dr.  Macfarland,  in  the 
early  years  of  his  life,  already  occupies  an  honourable 
place,  and  can  hardly  fail  in  the  years  to  come  to 
occupy  one  of  great  power  and  influence.  The  Chris- 
tian teacher  who  has  faced  the  facts,  who  ignores 
nothing,  who  is  determined  to  deal  candidly  with  the 
great  problems  of  religion,  may  not  always  address 
the  largest  crowds,  but  he  is  sure  of  his  own  constitu- 
ency, and  it  is  a  constituency  that  will  not  merely 
remain  faithful  and  grateful,  but  will  naturally  and 
steadily  enlarge.  In  these  days  of  transition,  espe- 
cially, when  so  many  feel  that  they  have  outgrown 
the  old  presentations  of  the  truth,  there  is  on  every 


INTRODUCTION 

side  a  reaching  out,  an  intense  desire,  for  a  faith  that 
will  satisfy  the  aspirations  of  the  soul  without  coming 
into  conflict  with  the  knowledge  of  the  mind.  It  is 
because  Dr.  Macfarland  is  one  of  the  company  of 
latter-day  prophets  who  have  such  a  faith  to  impart 
to  others,  that  I  should  like  this  volume  of  his  to 
reach  a  large  number  of  thoughtful  men  and  women, 
both  within  and  without  our  churches. 

I  will  in  this  connection  quote  some  words  Dr.  Mac- 
farland once  said  to  me — words  of  special  interest 
because  they  furnish  a  piece  of  self-jDortraiture,  an 
indication  of  his  own  aims  and  methods  as  a  teacher 
of  religion :  "If  we  are  to  preach  the  newer  views  with 
the  maximum  of  effectiveness  and  the  minimum  of 
friction,  we  must  use  the  minimum  of  negation  and 
the  maximum  of  affirmation,  and  we  must  not  be  im- 
patient or  intolerant.  It  is  possible  to  be  illiberally 
liberal.  Most  of  all,  we  shall  do  well  to  bring  out 
and  lay  continual  stress  upon  the  distinctively  moral 
and  spiritual  implications  of  the  new  position,  show- 
ing that  it  is  really  better  than  that  which  it  displaces. 
While  there  is  a  lower  and  a  higher  criticism,  let  us 
bear  in  mind  that  there  is  still  a  highest  criticism  of 
all:  that  wliieh  goes  beyond  the  literary  form  of 
Scripture,  and  penetrates  to  its  spiritual  truth.  It  is 
this  'highest  criticism'  which  we  must  consistently 
apply  and  practise  in  our  preaching." 

That  is  the  man;  to  which  I  need  only  add — and 
this  is  his  book. 

J.  Waeschauer. 


Preface 

The  following  pages  contain  a  Statement 
of  Faith  presented,  in  part,  to  an  Ecclesiasti- 
cal Council  of  the  Fairfield  West  Consociation, 
convened  at  the  South  Norwalk  Congrega- 
tional Church,  November  6,  1906. 

It  is  published  mainly  because  the  congre- 
gation of  the  South  Norwalk  Church  has  ex- 
pressed the  desire  that  it  be  preserved,  in  the 
historic  interest,  and  also  for  their  own  use. 

Charles  Stedman  Macfarland. 

The  Congregational  Parsonage, 
South  Norwalk,  Connecticut. 


Contents 


I. 

Inteoduction  :    Religion   and 

The- 

OLOGY         

. 

11 

II. 

The  Nature  of  God    . 

. 

21 

III. 

The    Place   of    Man    in    the 

Uni- 

VERSE        

. 

35 

IV. 

The   Moral    Opportunity   of 

Man. 

63 

V. 

The  Person  of  Christ 

. 

73 

VI. 

The   Sovereignty   of  Christ 

. 

129 

VII. 

The  Spirit  of  God 

. 

145 

Introduction: 

Religion  and  Theology 


Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  .  .  .  with  all  thy 
mind.  —  Matthew  22 :  37. 


RELIGION  AND  THEOLOGY 


It  is,  for  some  reasons,  a  good  thing  for  a 
minister  to  be  called  to  a  new  parish.  It  is 
well  that  when  he  is  so  called,  he  should  appear 
before  a  council  of  his  fathers  and  brethren  to 
bear  witness  to  his  faith,  to  indicate  the  sub- 
stance of  his  gospel,  and  to  set  forth  in  order 
its  fundamental  grounds. 

I  am  speaking  of  the  value  of  this  experi- 
ence for  himself.  When  other  men  ask  him. 
What  do  you  believe?  What  is  the  sub- 
stance of  your  gospel?  he  is  called  upon  to 
put  the  same  questions  to  himself. 

For  many  years,  perhaps,  he  has  been  fol- 
lowing the  bent  of  his  thought,  from  time  to 
time  abandoning  some  positions,  taking  up 
new  points  of  view,  seeking  to  follow  the  star 
of  truth,  and  from  week  to  week  delivering 
his  message  as  it  may  come  to  him,  without 
always  taking  into  account  the  larger  impli- 
cations of  his  new  conceptions.     His  ^^  little 

13 


14       THE   INFINITE   AFFECTION 

systems  have  their  day;  they  have  their  day 
and  cease  to  be,"  only,  however,  to  be  suc- 
ceeded by  others. 

That  his  faith  is  an  harmonious  whole,  at 
least  in  its  fundamental  points,  he  believes. 
It  may  be,  however,  that  he  does  not  pause 
very  often,  or  very  completely,  to  set  his 
intellectual  house  in  order,  or  to  apprehend 
that  order  as  an  order.  Therefore,  it  is  good 
for  him,  at  certain  times  in  his  life,  to  be  called 
upon  to  submit  his  theology  to  the  thoughtful 
consideration  of  thoughtful  men,  because  he 
is  thus  forced  to  submit  it  to  his  own  con- 
sideration. 

The  transition  from  one  pastorate  to  an- 
other offers  him  an  opportunity  and  imposes 
upon  him  the  obligation  to  do  this.  Instal- 
lation councils  have  this  great  value,  if  no 
other. 

The  author  of  this  book  has  been  recently 
called  to  do  this.  During  seven  years  at  the 
university  and  divinity  school,  followed  by 
six  years  of  preaching,  he  has  sought  to  sat- 
isfy the  desire  of  every  serious  man  to  find 
and  speak  the  truth.    Upon  the  assumption 


RELIGION   AND   THEOLOGY      15 

of  a  new  ministry  he  found  himself  called 
upon  to  submit  to  a  council  of  his  peers  and 
fathers  '^  a  comprehensive  statement  of  Chris- 
tian doctrine,"  and  to  justify  himself  as  a 
religious  teacher. 

Perhaps  the  only  value  this  book  can  claim 
is  this:  it  sets  forth,  at  the  close  of  his  first 
pastorate,  the  theology  of  a  young  man  who 
has  hospitably  submitted  himself  to  what  is 
termed  '^  modern  thought."  Therefore,  if  it 
is  not  worth  while  in  itself,  it  may  serve  in 
some  measure  to  indicate  the  symptoms  and 
trend  of  present-day  theology.  However  in- 
adequately this  may  be  done,  the  writer  does 
not  stand  alone.  He  knows  that  a  great  body 
of  other  men  share  his  feelings  and  accept  his 
interpretations.  He  believes  that,  with  all 
his  personal  limitations,  he  represents  a  school 
of  thought.  This  does  not  mean,  however, 
that  he  means  to  ignore  the  fact  that  other 
men,  in  ages  past,  have  also  done  some  think- 
ing. He,  with  his  modern  brethren,  has  fallen 
heir  to  a  magnificent  inheritance  of  truth.  It 
is  his  intention  to  build  upon  it,  to  fulfill 
rather  than  to  destroy. 


16       THE   INFINITE   AFFECTION 

The  following  pages  thus  constitute  an  at- 
tempt to  bring  together,  in  related  order  and 
within  a  brief  compass,  statements  of  our  an- 
cient faiths  in  modern  form  and  language  and 
with  present-day  emphasis. 

I  have  called  this  book  by  its  title,  because 
I  conceive  of  all  divine  response  to  human 
seeking  for  the  truth  as  the  expression  of 
God's  love  for  man  and  his  affectionate  inter- 
est in  man.  I  have  tried  to  find  a  term  to 
satisfy  my  own  desire  and  to  express  what  I 
mean  by  God.  The  most  satisfying  one  that 
I  can  find  is  "  The  Infinite  Affection." 

In  the  quest  to  apprehend  the  moral  order 
of  the  universe  I  find  everywhere  the  response 
of  the  divine  love.  It  is  the  witness  of  God's 
own  nature  as  Creator  and  Preserver.  It  is 
the  witness  of  the  soul  of  man  upon  whom 
God  has  placed  his  own  image.  It  is  per- 
fectly expressed  in  humanity  in  Jesus  Christ. 
The  Holy  Spirit  is  its  interpreter. 

It  was  Jesus,  be  it  remembered,  who  laid 
the  obligation  on  his  followers  to  use  the  in- 
tellect in  religion.  He  put  it  in  a  very  strik- 
ing way.    He  spoke  of  the  "  affectioa "  of 


RELIGION    AND   THEOLOGY      17 

the  intellect.  Man  must  love  God  mth  the 
mind.  He  believed  that  God  and  the  eternal 
order  were  worthy  of  the  thought  of  man. 

In  the  life  of  religion  the  knowledge  of  the 
truth  and  the  affection  of  consecrated  devo- 
tion are  thus  by  God  joined  together  and  may 
not  by  man  be  put  asunder.  Religion  is  both 
thought  and  feeling.  Only  an  artificial  dis- 
tinction separates  the  two.  Theology  is  not 
a  superannuated  appendix.  It  is  an  eter- 
nally enduring  science.  Religion,  without  it, 
is  like 

"  An  infant  crying  in  the  night: 
An  infant  crying  for  the  light: 
And  with  no  language  but  a  cry." 

The  deification  of  law  and  nature  is  neither 
religion  nor  theology.  Over  against  nature, 
a  God  can  have  neither  beginning  nor  end. 
He  is  the  infinite  subject  of  which  the  con- 
gregation of  objects  in  nature  is  one  expres- 
sion. Nature  is  an  organism  of  intelligible 
things.  God  is  the  eternal  intellect  himself. 
While  there  cannot  be  antagonism  between 
the  two,  antithesis  there  must  be.  No  one 
can  bow  in  reverence  to  a  nature  below  him 


18      THE   INFINITE   AFFECTION 

or  to  an  idea  within  hini.  Religion,  therefore, 
in  its  soul,  is  reverence  and  homage  to  a  su- 
preme Mind  and  Will.  To  such  a  Being  there 
cannot  fail  to  be  a  pathway  from  the  sensitive, 
the  intellectual  and  the  moral  highways  of 
human  life.  Conscience  may  act  as  human  be- 
fore it  is  discovered  to  be  divine.  It  does  not 
reach  its  height  until  the  discovery  is  made. 

In  both  worshipper  and  worshipped  there 
must  be  the  same  conscious  moral  order;  one, 
the  infinite  archetype,  the  other,  the  finite 
image,  susceptible  to  appeal  and  capable  of 
response.  The  moral  consciousness  of  man 
brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  profound  and 
momentous  questions  as  to  whether  its  sov- 
ereign intimations  are  verifiable  and  its  re- 
lations eternal.  Ethics  inevitably  perfect 
themselves  in  religion  or  degrade  themselves 
into  some  lurking  form  of  Hedonism.  The 
life  of  duty  must  become  the  life  of  an  enlight- 
ened affection.  This  moral  relation  between 
man  and  God  needs  to  be  adjusted  to  the  order 
of  the  universe.  Impersonal  impulse  must 
become  personal  affection  and  intelligent 
conviction. 


RELIGION   AND   THEOLOGY      19 

The  deeper  man's  religious  experience  be- 
comes in  the  realm  of  the  temporal,  the  pro- 
foimder  is  his  earnest  interest  in  the  eternal, 
as  "  deep  calleth  unto  deep.''    Thus 

"  BeUef  or  Unbelief 
Bears  upon  life,  determines  its  whole  course." 

The  object  of  this  book  is  to  reveal,  or, 
perhaps  better,  to  suggest,  some  processes  of 
thought,  witnesses  of  revelation,  and  some 
means  by  which  the  mutual  relations  between 
God,  man  and  the  moral  order  may  be  gained, 
intensified,  witnessed  and  apprehended. 


The  Nature  of  God 


God  is  Love.  —  /  John  4 : 8. 


THE  NATURE  OF  GOD 


The  supreme  and  sovereign  concern  of  hu- 
manity is  the  relation  of  the  human  soul  to 
God.  The  quest  for  the  Infinite  is  the  chief 
end  of  man.  The  longing  for  the  Eternal  is 
the  finest  aspiration  and  the  most  universal 
yearning  of  his  soul.  As  the  hart  panteth  for 
the  water-brooks,  so  thirsts  the  human  heart 
to  know  the  living  God,  in  whom  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being. 

The  sublimest  scenes  of  human  life  are  the 
child  at  his  mother's  knee  uttering  the  lisp- 
ing but  eternal  language  of  the  human  heart, 
and  the  aged  saint,  as  the  visions  of  the  earth 
fade  away  and  its  voices  are  lost,  commend- 
mg  the  fleeing  soul  to  the  eternal,  living 
God.  The  finest  sight  on  earth  is  that  of 
God's  children  kneeling  together,  with  eyes 
and  hearts  uplifted,  as  they  together  say, 
"  Our  Father."       For  an  earnest  man  or 

23 


24       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

woman,  life  without  God  is  an  unspeakable, 
unbearable  burden. 

Our  Puritan  and  Congregational  ancestors 
left  us  a  magnificent  heritage  of  truth,  and 
above  all  things  else  they  believed  in  God. 
That  belief  was  no  vague  and  shadowy  thing. 
They  believed  in  a  sovereign  God,  They  be- 
lieved in  Almighty  God.  This  is  the  supreme 
article  of  any  faith.  Every  other  is  but  an 
inference  from  it  and  a  corollary  to  it.  It 
determines  the  length  and  height  and  breadth 
of  a  man's  moral  being. 

The  Puritans  believed  in  Almighty  God, 
Maker  of  all  things,  Judge  of  all  men,  before 
whom  men  were  to  acknowledge  and  bewail 
their  manifold  transgressi^ons  against  his 
divine  majesty,  by  which  they  had  justly 
provoked  the  infinite  wrath  and  indignation, 
to  whom  they  repented  and  prayed,  Have 
mercy  upon  us. 

This  conception  of  the  absolute,  eternal, 
unmovable  sovereignty  of  the  Infinite,  and 
nothing  less  than  this,  is  the  ultimate  and 
fundamental  of  a  profound  religious  faith. 
The  man  is  not  worth  his  weight  in  dust  who 


THE  NATURE  OF  GOD  25 

does  not  stand  in  awe  of  God.  In  all  history 
and  biography,  in  every  age  and  clime  and 
nation,  this  has  been  the  spirit  that  has  hated 
iniquity,  broken  tyranny,  induced  righteous- 
ness, wrought  liberty  and  made  men  worth 
making.  And  there  never  was  an  iniquity 
hated,  nor  a  tyranny  broken,  nor  a  righteous- 
ness induced,  nor  a  liberty  wrought,  nor  a  man 
worth  making  made  without  it. 

Does  this  conception  deny  the  fatherhood 
of  God?  No!  It  is  essential  to  it.  The 
father  who  does  not  rule  his  household  with 
his  wisdom,  uphold  it  with  his  strong  arm 
and  guide  it  with  his  love,  is  no  father  at  all. 

But  the  super-eminent  operation  of  the 
universe  upon  man  is  the  appeal  of  God.  The 
superior  reaction  of  the  soul  upon  the  universe 
is  its  response  to  the  infinite  appeal. 

To  know  that  there  is  a  sovereign  God  is 
not  enough.  The  relation  of  the  human  soul 
to  the  universal  order  is  determined  by  the 
ultimate  nature  of  the  Infinite. 

The  mind  of  man  has  spent  itself  in  loftiest 
achievement  in  its  effort  to  apprehend  the 
divine  nature  and  to  think  over  after  him  the 


26       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

thoughts  of  God.  In  the  infinite  energy  that 
creates  and  eternally  sustains  the  universe 
men  have  found  the  divine  omnipotence  and 
universal  sovereignty.  In  the  reason  at  the 
heart  of  things  they  have  discovered  the  in- 
finite, omniscient  mind.  But  these  are  mere 
approaches  and  do  not  satisfy  the  heart  of 
man.  Beyond  this  outer  Gentile  court  lies 
the  Holy  place  within  the  temple,  the  uni- 
versal moral  order  in  the  experience  of  the 
race.  Still  beyond  lies  the  Holy  of  holies, 
the  place  where  the  individual  human  soul 
faces  the  eternal  reality  and  makes  its  serious 
quest  to  know  the  moral  character  and  heart 
of  God.  The  earliest  human  soul  began  it. 
Through  patriarch  and  prophet  the  search 
went  on.  And  it  ever  was  a  measuring  of 
God  by  man.  There  was  no  other  way  or 
light.  Like  only  could  answer  unto  like. 
The  growing  revelation  was  God  within  man 
responding  to  the  God  without.  Men  carried 
back  themselves  to  God.  The  limitation  of 
their  view  was  from  the  fact  that,  with  their 
moral  virtues,  they  traced  back  to  the  Infinite 
their  moral  faults.    It  was  so  until  Christ 


THE  NATURE  OF  GOD  27 

came.  In  his  holy  Hght  those  who  beheld 
with  clearest  vision  could  see  through  the 
shadows  which  men  had  cast  upon  God's 
nature,  and  one  of  them,  reputed  nearest 
Christ,  saw  and  exclaimed,  as  he  beheld  the 
infinite  vision,  "  For  God  is  love  ";  and  the 
final  word  was  spoken. 

Note  the  unqualifiedness  of  the  utterance. 
It  is  not,  God  has  love;  it  is  not,  God  loves; 
it  is  not  a  quality  shared  in  contrast  to,  or 
shared  with,  others.  God  is  love.  It  is  spoken 
as  though  he  could  be  no  more.  It  is  spoken 
as  though  he  could  be  nothing  less  or  else. 
Men  had  spoken  of  the  infinite  love  as  a  qual- 
ity. Men  have  said,  and  some  say  now,  "  God 
is  just  and  righteous;  nay,  God  must  be  just 
and  righteous.  He  may  be  loving."  Let  us 
not  hesitate  to  reverse  the  proposition.  Never 
mind  if  it  denies  tradition  and  theologic 
thought.  Never  mind  though  it  goes  beyond 
the  conception  of  patriarch,  prophet,  psalmist, 
priest.  Let  us  say,  "  Let  God  be  true  though 
every  man  be  false." 

If  these  have  said,  ''  God  will  love  the 
good  who  love  him;  the  Infinite  will  care  for 


28       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

those  who  worship  his  righteousness  and  ad- 
mire his  justice  ";  let  us,  even  though  we  go 
beyond  our  teachers,  say:  "We  love  him 
because  he  first  loved  us.  Before  we  loved 
him,  before  we  did  his  righteous  will,  he  first 
loved  us,  '  for  God  is  love.'  " 

May  we  know  the  nature  and  the  quality, 
the  scope  in  time,  and  space,  of  the  love  which 
God  is.  Two  other  attributes  of  the  Infinite 
the  mind  of  man  has  determined.  He  is  ab- 
solute and  he  is  universal.  For  if  in  power 
and  presence  God  should  fail  at  any  single 
point,  the  universe  itself  is  insecure  and  may 
be  lost  at  any  moment.  The  most  fatal  error 
of  the  human  mind  is  any  forced  limitation 
of  the  Almighty.  It  is  a  contradiction  in  its 
very  terms.  If,  then,  God  is  love,  and  if  the 
love  of  God  be  limited  by  either  space  or 
time,  he  is  no  longer  absolute  and  universal, 
and  he  is  hence  no  longer  God.  The  limita- 
tion of  his  love  in  time  or  scope  is  an  inevi- 
table atheism. 

The  sole  hope  of  man  is  God.  The  sole 
hope  of  retaining  God  is  in  the  absoluteness 
and  the  universality  of  the  divine  love.    His 


THE  NATURE  OF  GOD  29 

righteousness  must  be  the  righteousness  of 
love.  His  wrath  must  be  the  holy  wrath  of 
love.  His  retribution  must  be  the  recom- 
pense of  love.  They  are  all  determined,  lim- 
ited, described,  if  God  is  love,  by  love.  If 
God  is  an  eternal  being,  and  if  God  is  love, 
then  the  love  of  God  is  nothing  less  than  an 
eternal  thing.  If  God  be  universal  and  in 
communication  with  every  human  soul,  then, 
when  you  bring  these  things  together,  it  yields 
the  truth  that  the  eternal  love  of  God  extends 
eternally  to  every  saint  and  sinner  of  the 
human  race.  There  is  no  other  issue,  be  it 
true  that  God  is  love.  The  love  of  the  Eternal 
for  every  human  soul  is  an  eternally  enduring 
love.  Its  universality  in  space  and  time 
means  its  eternal  endurableness,  not  only 
alike  for  poor  and  rich,  for  white  and  black, 
but  for  every  sinner  as  well  as  for  every  saint, 
for  the  child  who  is  the  prodigal  in  the  far 
country  as  well  as  for  the  brother  obedient  in 
the  home.  The  door  of  hope  is  never  closed 
by  the  Father's  hand.  There  is  no  other  pos- 
sibility if  God  is  love. 
The  simplest  and  the  best  that  men  can  do 


30       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

to  gain  the  apprehension  of  the  eternal  Father 
is  to  take  the  highest  and  the  best  in  them- 
selves and  move  it  up  to  an  infinitude  in  God. 
In  the  middle  ages  of  the  Christian  Church 
theologic  thought  gave  men  a  forbidding  God. 
That  age  is  pictured  in  the  Sistine  Chapel  in 
Rome,  where  Jesus  Christ  is  awfully  pre- 
sented as  the  relentless  judge  of  men.  So  it 
happened  that  men  really  turned  away  from 
God  and  Christ,  and  that  was  how  they  came 
to  worship  Mary.  They  took  the  best  and  the 
highest  in  themselves;  they  found  that  in 
motherhood.  They  wanted  an  infinite  moth- 
erhood. It  was  denied  them,  by  the  inter- 
preters of  thought,  in  God  and  Christ,  and  so 
they  turned  to  Mary.  There  was  no  other 
way,  there  is  no  other  way,  to  find  the  highest 
good  but  by  an  infinite  extension  of  the  good 
in  self.  Man  must  make  his  God  an  image 
of  the  best  he  finds  in  the  human  heart. 

"  Not  mine  to  look  where  cherubim 
And  seraphs  may  not  see. 
But  —  nothing  can  be  good  in  Him 
Which  evil  is  in  me." 

How  widely  and  how  long  does  a  mother- 


THE  NATURE  OF  GOD  31 

love  extend?  Is  it  confined  to  the  children 
that  are  good?  Is  there  not  love  for  the  wan- 
dering, wayward  child?  But  how  long  will 
such  a  love  last?  When  does  it  fail?  Go, 
ask  the  question  of  any  mother.  Say  to  her, 
"  Mother,  how  many  of  your  children  do  you 
love?  Mother,  how  long  do  you  mean  to  love 
the  one  that  grieves  your  heart?  " 

Why,  then,  with  the  issue  so  simple,  have 
men  bounded  the  love  of  God  by  time  and 
space?  It  is  because  both  moral  judgment 
and  moral  retribution  raise  their  rightful  cry. 
But  these  are  evidences  of  a  love  that  is  true. 
It  longs  for  goodness  in  the  loved.  Here  again 
the  best  in  the  human  soul  may  be  lifted  to  its 
height  in  God.  Our  ideals  of  the  state  have 
risen.  The  punishment  of  crime  is  the  oppor- 
tunity for  reformation,  not  for  vengeance. 
So  judgment  and  retribution  are  among  the 
evidences  of  the  eternal  love.  If  thus  the 
best  of  human  love  is  no  better  than  the  love 
divine,  it  must  be  true  that  the  heart  of  the 
eternal  Father  will  never  be  satisfied  until 
the  last  child  comes  home. 

The  supreme  appeal  of  the  universe  to  man 


32       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

is  the  appeal  of  love.  If  love  should  fail,  no 
hope  is  left.  The  human  soul  that  was  simply 
won  by  a  slavish  fear  of  retribution  would  not 
be  won.  There  is  one  kind  of  evangelism 
which  does  not  evangelize.  It  is  that  which 
fails  to  win  by  the  ultimate  appeal  of  love. 
The  love  of  God  is  like  a  mother's  holy  prayer, 
that  follows  the  son  to  the  very  ends  of  shame. 
It  is  the  one  thing  that  never  dies  and  never 
can  be  put  to  death. 

"  They  sin  who  tell  us  love  can  die." 
"  Its  holy  flame  forever  bumeth." 

It  compasses  the  path  of  men.  It  besets 
them  behind  and  before.  Whither  shall  I  go 
from  its  spirit  or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  its 
presence?  If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  it  is 
there.  If  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  it  is  there. 
If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning,  and  dwell 
in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea ;  even  there  it 
seeks  to  guide  and  lead  me.  If  I  say,  Surely 
the  darkness  shall  cover  me,  its  light  shall 
never  fail.  No  matter  where  my  human  soul 
may  be.  Thou,  God,  seest  me,  and  with  the 
eye  of  love.  Our  God  is  a  consuming  fire.  It 
is  the  holy  flame  of  love. 


THE  NATURE  OF  GOD  33 

"  The  wrong  that  pains  my  soul  below 
I  dare  not  throne  above. 
I  know  not  of  his  hate  —  I  know 
His  goodness  and  his  love. 

"  I  know  not  where  his  islands  lift 
Their  fronded  palms  in  air. 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 
Beyond  his  love  and  care." 

"  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the 
Father."  This  utterance  of  the  supreme  re- 
vealer  of  the  Infinite  involves,  in  equal  meas- 
ure, two  profound,  eternal  truths.  The  one 
is  the  divinity  of  Christ.  The  other  is  the  hu- 
manity of  God. 

God  is  the  universal,  absolute  Reason  and 
infinite  Affection,  a  personal  Spirit,  conscious 
and  self-directing,  a  being  of  moral  perfection, 
who  holds  moral  relations  with  mankind,  who 
in  absolute  righteousness  and  supreme  love 
directs  the  universe  to  a  wisely  foreseen  and 
beneficent  end.  He  is  the  supreme  Thought, 
the  essential  Mind,  the  infinite  Intelligence, 
the  eternal  Tenderness,  who  in  perfect  holi- 
ness and  never-ending  love  guides  the  human 
soul  to  goodness. 


34       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

"  All's  Love,  yet  all's  Law,"  and  all  is  law, 
yet  all  is  love. 

What  is  the  chief  end  of  man?  It  is  to 
glorify  God  and  enjoy  him  forever.  No  pro- 
fomider  question  was  ever  asked;  and  no 
better  answer  ever  given. 

The  other  question  is  equally  legitimate 
and  commensurately  deep.  What  is  the 
supreme  intent  of  God?  The  answer  is 
equally  as  true.  To  glorify  man  and  to  eter- 
nally delight  in  him. 

These  two  eternal  verities  are  the  speech 
which  day  imto  day  uttereth,  and  the  knowl- 
edge which  is  shown  forth  from  night  to  night. 


The  Place  of  Man  in  the  Universe 


"Who  was  I,  that  I  could  withstand  God?  "—Acts 
11:17, 


THE   PLACE   OF   MAN   IN   THE 
UNIVERSE 


In  his  recent  book  entitled  "  Man's  Place 
in  the  Universe,"  Alfred  Russel  Wallace 
gives  to  human  nature  a  sovereign  position. 
Amid  the  many  systems  with  their  myriads 
of  heavenly  bodies,  in  a  universe  infinite  in 
time  and  space,  the  earth  occupies  a  central 
position  in  this  almost  unthinkable  universe. 
It  seems  to  be  the  only  inhabited  or  inhab- 
itable planet  in  our  own  or  in  any  other  solar 
system.  Among  the  multitude  of  living 
creatures  on  this  earth,  by  an  age-long  pro- 
cess of  evolution,  all  has  culminated  in  man. 
Thus  man  k  the  superior  being,  not  only  on 
this  earth,  but  in  the  universe  of  many  worlds. 
Whether  this  be  so  or  not,  man  is  a  sovereign 
being. 

It  makes  little  difference  whether  we  look 
at  it  thus  from  the  viewpoint  of  evolutionary 
science  or  from  another  point  of  view.  If  we 
follow  the  thought  of  Bushnell,  and  find  the 

37 


38       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 


dignity  of  man  revealed  in  the  ruins  amid 
which  he  has  fallen;  if  we  take  the  order  of 
thought  in  Genesis,  and  behold  him  as  fallen 
from  his  God-bestowed  ideal;  if  we  behold 
him  ideally  in  the  person  of  the  perfect  man 
Jesus  Christ,  we  shall  unite  in  the  psalmist's 
refrain,  ''  When  I  consider  thy  heavens,  the 
work  of  thy  fingers,  the  moon  and  the  stars, 
which  thou  hast  ordained,''  and  witness  man 
as  the  superior  being  in  this  great  universe, 
made  a  little  lower  than  God,  and  come  to  the 
same  thought, —  the  inherent  dignity  and 
power  of  humanity. 

I  do  not  propose  to  follow  the  thought  of 
the  narrator  in  Genesis,  or  of  the  psalmist,  in 
detail,  and  consider  man's  power  over  nature, 
and  how  he  harnesses  the  wind  to  do  his  bid- 
ding, and  draws  the  lightning  from  the  sky  to 
serve  his  purpose.  I  bear  witness  concerning 
man's  place  in  the  moral  universe. 

''  Who  was  I,  that  I  could  withstand  God?  " 
Peter  shared  the  Jewish  view  of  divine  sov- 
ereignty. Everything  that  happened  was  by 
the  direct  intervention  of  the  Infinite.  Man 
had  no  power  against  God.     This  view  was 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  39 

right  as  an  ideal  view  and  in  a  moral  universe 
which  had  attained  its  true  being;  but  it  is 
not  an  actual  truth  at  the  present  stage,  nor 
will  it  be  until  God's  will  becomes  man's  will. 

It  is  possible  for  man  to  withstand  God; 
to  foil  his  divine  attempts,  to  frustrate  his 
eternal  plans,  to  temporarily  defeat  his  holy 
will.  Man  has  and  exercises  a  tremendous 
power  against  God. 

It  is  generally  realized  that  a  chief  fault 
of  the  theology  which  we  have  just  outlived 
was  its  determinism.  It  did  not  sufficiently 
recogniae  the  voluntary  limitations  of  the 
Infinite.  It  obscured  human  volition  and 
responsibility.  We  are  all  come  to  feel  pro- 
foundly to-day,  that  man  is  the  ultimate 
architect  of  his  own  character;  the  hewer  of 
his  own  statue;  the  arbiter  of  his  destiny.  He 
is  not  mere  mobile  clay  in  the  hands  of  the 
divine  potter;  he  is  morally  self-determining. 
It  is  the  final  verdict  of  observation,  thought 
and  conscience,  that  man  has,  at  least  to  a 
large  extent,  his  own  moral  way.  To  him 
has  been  intrusted  the  power  to  determine 
whether  he  shall  do  wrong  or  right.     While 


40       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

this  truth  has  its  hmitations  and  modifica- 
tions, we,  in  our  consciences,  profoundly  feel 
that  we  are  responsible  for  our  own  moral 
volitions  and  actions. 

The  truth,  however,  is  larger  than  this; 
man  is  not  only  self-determining,  but,  in  a 
large  measure,  he  determines  and  directs  the 
universal  moral  order.  He  can,  and  may, 
withstand  God,  defy  him  and  temporarily 
defeat  his  purposes  and  plans. 

The  Old  Testament  Scriptures  give  us  this 
truth  at  the  very  beginning.  It  would  be 
well  if  men  would  study  these  Scriptures  and 
find  such  truths,  rather  than  exhaust  their 
powers  in  critical  and  literary  discussions. 
Eden  is  the  picture  of  God's  plan.  The  fall 
was  man's  destruction  of  that  Eden,  repre- 
senting man's  power  to  frustrate  God.  The 
result  is  that  the  trend  and  hope  of  good  is 
hampered  by  the  presence  of  human  evil, 
and  human  life  has  become  like  that  of  nature, 
a  varied  one  of  sun  and  clouds. 

In  one  sense  it  is  true  that  the  idea  of  sin 
is  sometimes  overstated.  Sufficient  account 
has  not  always  been  taken  of  the  forces  of 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  41 

heredity  and  environment.  Men  are  becom- 
ing more  cautious  in  their  moral  judgment. 
They  are  not  so  anxious  to  usurp  the  divine 
prerogative  of  distinguishing  between  their 
fellows.  Nevertheless,  while  no  thoughtful 
man  will  become  a  pessimist,  neither  will  a 
serious-minded  man  become  a  careless  opti- 
mist, ignoring  the  reality  of  the  moral  con- 
flict between  man  and  God. 

It  is  a  wonderful  thought,  the  thought  of 
this  power,  this  moral  ability  which  God  him- 
self has  given  us,  to  interfere,  to  prevent  and 
stay  the  hand  of  God,  and  to  obstruct  the 
moral  order  of  the  universe. 

Yet  it  is  easy  to  see  the  truth  by  analogy. 
Let  us  consider  man's  power  for  evil  in  smaller 
circles  than  the  universe  or  the  world.  Let 
us  take  one  man  in  our  thought  as  an  example. 
Here  is  the  circle  of  the  home;  it  may  have 
many  members;  it  may  have  many  influences 
for  happiness  and  good,  j^et  how  absolutely 
one  member  of  that  circle  can  destroy  the 
order  of  that  home!  Let  us  take  the  larger 
circle  of  social  life.  What  awful  woe  one 
human  being  can  bring  about  within  that 


42       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

circle,  what  terrible  suffering!  How  many 
hearts  can  he  break!  Take,  if  you  will,  the 
circle  of  the  church.  How  frequently  one 
member  can  stay  its  progress,  destroy  its  har- 
mony and  temporarily  dispose  of  its  effect- 
iveness! The  moral  power  of  a  single 
individual  is  tremendous.  It  is  like  the  rip- 
ple of  the  stone  cast  upon  the  waters;  it  goes 
on,  and  on,  and  causes  endless  consequences. 
So  it  is  with  this  moral  universe  in  which  we 
hve.  God's  plan  is  for  the  reign  of  goodness. 
On  every  hand  man  is  frustrating  that  plan. 
God  wants  it  to  be  a  universe  of  love.  His 
plan  is  foiled  by  human  hatred.  He  desires 
it  to  be  a  universe  of  charity.  Men  violate 
his  will  by  their  miserable  censoriousness.  It 
is  to  be  a  universe  of  purity,  but  human  vio- 
lations sometimes  make  awful  its  defilement. 
Its  civic  life  is  to  be  one  of  righteousness. 
How  the  civic  plans  of  the  Eternal  are  des- 
troyed! Jesus  tells  us  that  it  is  to  be  an 
organization  of  fraternity.  Witness  man^s 
grinding  commercial  competition!  It  is  to  be 
a  universe  of  truth.  The  plan  is  defied  by  the 
prevalence  of  human  suspicion.    Its  society  is 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  43 

to  be  one  of  mutual  helpfulness.  Witness  the 
rigid,  miserable  social  distinctions  of  mankind! 

Its  ideal  is  that  of  human  brotherhood 
under  the  divine  fatherhood.  Over  against 
this  behold  the  bitterness  and  strife  of  the 
industrial  order!  A  world  in  which  all  men 
are  to  be  free  and  equal.  Over  against  this, 
look  at  St.  Petersburg  and  Constantinople! 
Every  man  is  to  have  the  same  rights.  Wit- 
ness some  proposed  solutions  of  the  race  prob- 
lem. It  is  to  be  a  universe  of  peace.  Look 
on  the  underlying  suspicious  watchfulness  of 
nation  over  nation!  At  any  moment  to-day 
the  immediate  action  of  just  one  man  in  this 
great  world  of  men  might  set  the  nations  of 
the  world  at  war. 

While  no  man  of  thought  and  vision  can 
be  a  pessimist,  neither  can  he  be  a  self-satis- 
fied and  easy-going  optimist.  It  is  a  preg- 
nant and  wonderful  thought  that  our  human 
sin  not  only  affects  our  individual  selves;  not 
only  interferes  with  the  peace  and  order  of 
some  narrow  human  circle;  but,  as  one  small 
part  of  an  intricate  machine  when  out  of 
order  destroys  the  effectiveness  of  the  whole, 


44       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

so  our  sinful  acts  affect  the  whole  moral  uni- 
verse, are  powers  and  fcfl-ces  against  God, 
which  perpetually  disarrange  the  plans  and 
purposes  of  the  infinite  love  and  goodness. 

Another  thought,  equally  significant.  In 
a  moral  sense,  God  is  powerless  in  the  hands 
of  man.  He  can  destroy  man;  he  can  send 
floods  and  earthquakes;  perhaps  he  some- 
times does,  to  make  men  thoughtful.  One 
thing  he  cannot  do:  he  cannot  make  men 
good  by  force.  The  nature  of  the  universe 
forbids  it. 

A  story  is  told  of  Principal  Jowett,  of 
Balliol  College.  A  student  came  to  him  with 
the  conceit  that  sometimes  characterizes  a 
young  man,  and  said  complacently,  "  Prin- 
cipal Jowett,  as  the  result  of  my  investigations 
I  have  lost  my  belief  in  God."  Mr.  Jowett 
looked  him  sternly  in  the  face  and  said, 
''  Young  man,  find  it  by  to-morrow  morning 
at  nine  o'clock,  or  you  will  leave  this  college." 
It  is  perhaps  good  as  a  story,  but  it  illustrates 
an  impossibility;  man  cannot  be  made  mor- 
ally good  by  force. 
.  That  man  might  have  the  dignity  of  self- 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  45 

determination,  God  has  yielded  his  own  moral 
sovereignty.  Men  ask,  "  Why  does  the  In- 
finite allow  evil?"  There  are  various  an- 
swers. The  frankest,  the  best,  is,  that  God 
cannot  help  it  in  a  universe  of  moral  beings. 
If  men  were  mere  puppets  they  would  not  be 
moral  beings,  and  there  could  be  no  moral 
order.  God  means  to  be,  not  a  sovereign  des- 
pot, but  a  father,  even  though  it  takes  a  long 
time  to  attain  his  holy  end.  To  illustrate: 
here  is  your  child.  You  cannot  command 
him  and  say,  '^  Love  me."  You  cannot 
threaten  him  and  say,  '^  You  must  love  your 
brother."  No  more  can  the  heavenly  Parent; 
but  God  wants  love  and  goodness  in  the  world. 
While  he  has  not  invaded  the  sacred  pre- 
cincts of  personality  with  force  of  arms,  he 
gives  us  opportunity;  he  gives  us  incentive; 
he  gives  as  one  of  his  best  gifts  to  us  the  spec- 
ter of  retribution  that  he  may  make  us  good. 
And  we  live  in  a  hopeless  world,  if  we  do  not 
believe  in  the  ultimate  victory  of  goodness, 
if  we  do  not  feel  that  in  the  end  love  will  be- 
come supreme.  We  need  also  to  realize,  how- 
ever, that  every  bad,  unloving,  untruthful 


46       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

act,  or  thought  of  ours,  serves  to  foil  and 
defeat  the  eternal  goodness. 

We  pray,  and  I  believe  that  we  have  the 
right  to  hope,  for  the  final  sovereignty  of 
love,  despite  its  delay  by  human  freedom; 
that  some  day  the  Infinite,  who  knows  no 
sense  of  time,  to  whom  a  thousand  years  are 
but  a  day,  will  gain  his  ends.  Can  it  be  by 
crushing  men?  Can  it  be  by  eternal  separa- 
tion? There  is,  at  least,  with  all  of  us  the 
infinite  hope  that  the  victory  of  the  infinite 
love  will  be  greater  than  that.  Most  of  us 
find  it  difficult  to  feel  sure  of  ever  winning  all 
men.  We  need  to  guard  against  an  easy- 
going satisfaction.  Yet  we  have  the  right  to 
hold  it  as  ideal,  and  even  to  hope,  that  some 
day  this  moral  universe  will  be  under  the 
control  of  the  infinite  affection;  that  there  is 
"  one  God,  one  Law,  one  Element,"  and  that 
at  least  there  may  be  '^one  far-off  divine 
event,  to  which  the  whole  creation  moves.'' 
We  may  be  hopeful,  for  all  God's  forces  are 
for  the  conquest  of  love. 

Nevertheless,  we  can  never  lose  our  sense  of 
the  awfulness  of  human  sin.     We  should  feel 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  47 

ourselves  awed,  moved,  by  the  tremendous 
thought,  that  by  our  sins  we  exercise  a  power 
against  God,  which,  for  the  time  being,  defeats 
and  delays  the  sovereignty  and  sway  of  good- 
ness, truth  and  love. 

This  is  a  one-sided  affirmation.  There  is 
another  aspect  of  this  truth  which  we  may 
witness  later  on,  for  we  must  try  to  see  both 
sides  of  it.  Man's  place  in  the  universe?  In 
a  large  measure  God  has  turned  over  his 
moral  universe  into  our  hands,  has  given  us 
the  privilege  of  helping  him  to  bring  his  plans 
to  pass,  and  with  it  the  necessary  power  to 
deter  his  own  eternal  purposes. 

Given  thus  a  moral  God,  and  man  a  moral 
being,  and  we  have  certain  implications. 
The  first  of  these  deductions  is  the  sense  of 
moral  obligation.  In  the  light  of  a  God  per- 
fect in  character,  absolute  in  righteousness, 
man  beholds  himself  in  contrast.  He  sees 
and  knows  himself  only  as  he  knows  and  feels 
God.  The  consciousness  of  God  inevitably 
brings  this  personal  sense  of  human  sin.  We 
can  afford  to  dispense  with  original  and  theo- 
retical sin.    There  is  enough  left  that  is  actual 


48       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

and  undeniable.  We  admit  that  there  are 
crimes.  All  else  we  are  prone  to  look  upon  as 
infirmities.  There  is  something  between  the 
two.  It  is  sin.  We  do  wrongs;  we  do  them 
intentionally  and  volitionally.  We  repeat 
them.  We  sin;  we  are  sinful.  The  sense  of 
it  is  the  first  step  to  holiness.  The  better 
men  become,  the  keener  is  their  consciousness 
of  it.  No  saint  ever  lived  who  did  not  feel  it 
deeply.  The  complacent  self-satisfaction  of 
our  generation  needs  humbling  in  the  dust. 
The  conception  of  sin  as  an  offence  against  an 
outraged  and  righteously  indignant  God  must 
not  become  an  unknown,  unheard  and  for- 
gotten thing.  We  must  relearn  the  preach- 
ing of  it.  This  conception  and  consciousness 
of  God,  with  man's  self-consciousness,  gives 
hun  his  relation  to  the  universe.  I  live  under 
that  all-seeing  eye.  This  Infinite  demands 
righteousness  of  me.  He  sees  my  evil  deeds 
and  knows  my  evil  thoughts,  and  abhors 
them.  He  rightly  demands  confession  of 
them  and  the  substitution  of  repentance, 
issuing  in  good  works.  Sin  is  an  offence 
against  an  outraged  divine  justice. 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  49 

Does  this  impair  the  heavenly  fatherhood? 
Will  a  true  father  encourage  his  children 
in  their  sin  by  countenancing  it?  Is  God 
a  seller  of  indulgences?  The  fatherhood  of 
God  calls  for  the  forbidding  of  sin,  and  if  he 
ignores  it  he  is  no  true  Father. 

If  thus  we  follow  an  adequate  conception 
of  God  and  its  consciousness  of  sin  in  the  light 
of  moral  obligation,  we  are  led  on  by  the  un- 
deviating  march  of  law  and  logic  to  another 
ancient  and  much  execrated  doctrine.  Cause 
has  relation  to  effect.  Moral  acts  have  their 
inevitable  consequences.  Is  there  a  judg- 
ment? It  is  the  question  of  an  imbecile 
mind.  Do  moral  paths  lead  nowhere?  Can 
men  break  laws  without  consequences?  Can 
men  break  eternal  laws  without  eternal  con- 
sequences? Try  it.  There  is  yonder  lofty 
colunm.  There  is  a  law  called  gravitation. 
Break  it,  and  step  airily  from  the  summit.  To 
break  that  law  means  death.  Has  the  Infinite 
been  thus  exact  in  the  physical  realm  of  law 
and  indifferent  in  the  spiritual?  Is  the  ma- 
terial universe  a  cosmos  and  the  spiritual  a 
chaos?    The  age  to  which  we  are  called  to 


50       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

proclaim  the  truth  needs  to  be  told  that 
while  it  blinds  itself  to  the  eternal  future,  the 
eternal  laws  of  God  move  to  their  issues  with 
as  certain  and  as  ceaseless  and  eternal  march 
as  if  men  saw  them.  They  may  hide  their 
heads  beneath  the  screen  of  the  coverlet,  but 
the  lightning  does  not  thereby  cease  to  flash 
nor  lose  its  pathway  to  its  mark.  They  may 
bury  their  eyes  in  the  desert  sands,  but  they 
do  not  thus  annihilate  the  danger.  The  sim- 
ple and  undeniable  truth  needs  to  be  dwelt 
on,  that  there  are  two  ways  and  trends  of  life 

—  to  ruin  and  to  blessedness;  that  every  moral 
decision  of  every  moral  being,  that  every 
moral  act  of  every  moral  personality,  brings 
it  nearer  the  edge  or  center  of  a  path.  We 
are  false  to  ourselves,  and  commit  a  crime 
against  men,  if  we  do  not  tell  them  they  are 
moving,  either  towards  the  heaven  of  a  grow- 
ing life,  or  towards  a  day  of  remorse,  by 
whatever  name  we  call  it. 

Will  there  be  a  judgment?  It  is  —  now. 
Science  dares  to  state  it  for  us  in  appalling 
terms.    It  is  called  the  survival  of  the  fittest 

—  correspondence  to  environment.    Philoso- 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  51 

phy  calls  it  cause  and  effect.  Judgment  is 
but  another  way  of  stating  the  law  of  the  sur- 
vival of  the  morally  fit,  of  correspondence 
to  divine  environment.  The  evangelist  who 
warns  men  to  seek  the  glory  or  to  flee  the 
wrath  to  come  is  but  stating  a  proposition  in 
mathematics.  Two  lines  going  in  different 
directions  will  never  come  together.  The  doc- 
trine of  divine  judgment  is  the  simplest  and 
most  apparent  of  all  truths.  It  is  that  every 
man  is  free  to  go  as  he  wills,  and  that  he  will 
go  where  he  goes.  He  is  his  own  witness  and 
his  own  judge. 

Are  love  and  fatherhood  impaired?  No, 
it  is  essential  to  them.  This  moral  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  has  for  its  end  to  pro- 
duce moral  fitness.  It  could  be  produced  no 
other  way.  The  freedom  of  the  human  will 
involves  it.  And  as  moral  fitness  could  be 
produced  by  no  other  method,  so  moral  fit- 
ness never  will  be  produced  by  any  other 
preaching  than  the  solemn  preaching  of  this 
truth.  Would  he  be  a  father  if  he  let  his 
children  sin  against  themselves?  Would  he 
be  a  father  if  he  let  them  misuse  his  other 


52       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

children  without  punishment?  The  true  fa- 
ther wants  his  children  to  be  good.  To  gain 
this  end  he  must,  if  he  be  true,  use  every 
means. 

God  is  so  good  and  loving  that  he  is  con- 
cerned that  his  children  should  have  more 
than  enough  to  eat  and  drink.  He  is  su- 
premely concerned  for  their  moral  welfare. 
He  wants  them  to  be  righteous.  He  has 
placed  the  barrier  of  retribution  between 
them  and  evil  that  they  might  turn  from  evil. 
Judgment,  retribution,  punishment,  belong 
among  the  evidences  of  love. 

It  is  the  tendency  of  men  and  women  to 
evade  these  deep  and  serious  issues  of  life,  to 
shut  out  the  things  that  make  them  tremble, 
to  close  their  eyes  to  remote  consequences, 
to  live  in  the  present  and  ignore  the  future. 
The  age  in  which  we  live  is  characterized  by 
this  desire  to  neglect  the  serious  consideration 
of  human  destiny. 

Were  this  not  so,  men  could  never,  as  they 
are  doing,  use  the  opportunities  created  by 
an  agitation  in  the  ranks  of  labor  to  fill  their 
pockets  at  the  expense  of  the  suffering,  hun- 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  53 

gering,  starving  and  freezing  poor.  Were  it 
not  so,  men  could  not  recklessly  use  the  gift 
of  public  office  for  the  gain  of  private  greed. 
Were  it  not  so,  the  great  mass  of  men  and 
women  could  not  forsake  the  duties  and  be 
indifferent  to  the  obligations  imposed  by  the 
religious  sense  of  man. 

Everywhere  about  us,  men  and  women  sail 
merrily  on  over  the  surface  of  an  ocean  deep 
with  eternal  perils.  The  danger  of  our  time 
is  the  dulling  and  the  death  of  conscience,  the 
loss  of  the  sense  of  Almighty  God,  the  blind- 
ness that  refuses  to  concern  itself  with  the 
supreme  and  ultimate  ends  of  human  life. 

It  is  this  moral  obligation,  this  spiritual 
sense,  this  divinely  imposed  responsibility 
and,  in  the  ultimate  analysis,  only  this,  that 
makes  us  better  than  the  brutes.  To  the 
extent  that  we  realize  and  meet  these  ends, 
and  only  thus,  are  we  above  the  beasts  of  the 
field.  This  truth,  modern  thought,  philosophy 
and  science  make  clear.  Physically  we  are 
one  with  the  lower  orders  of  nature.  In  men- 
tal operations  there  is  difference  only  in  de- 
gree.    Mentality  exists  in  the  scales  of  life 


54       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

below  us.  The  sole  prerogative  of  man, 
which  ultimately  distinguishes  him  from  his 
ancestors  hanging  to  the  boughs  and  chatter- 
ing in  the  tree-tops,  is  his  conscious  and  vol- 
untary moral  action.  The  difference  is  this: 
they  were  pushed  on  and  upward  to  their  end 
by  resident  forces  from  behind.  We  have 
been,  not  only  thus,  but  also  drawn  by  ideals 
revealed  from  above.  We  have  a  higher  resi- 
dent force,  the  impulse  to  attain,  a  higher 
inherent  quality,  the  sense  of  responsibility 
for  our  attainment.  The  difference  and  the 
distinction  is  that  eternal  trusts  are  com- 
mitted to  our  care. 

Thus,  so  far  as  we  evade  eternal  trusts,  so 
far  as  we  stifle  the  voice  of  God  within,  so  far 
as  we  deny  or  ignore  divine  responsibility 
and  obligation,  we  efface  all  ultimate  distinc- 
tion between  ourselves  and  the  lower  orders 
of  the  universe,  and  are  nothing  but  creatures 
of  the  dust. 

Mark,  then,  the  inevitable  conclusion  of 
the  laws  of  philosophic  thought  and  scientific 
fact.  Operations  of  mind  are  not  confined 
to  man  but  are  shared  with  his  progenitors 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  55 

about  him  in  the  woods  and  fields.  This  evo- 
hition  has  made  clear.  It  is  the  distinguish- 
ing sense  of  divine  responsibility  that  we  call 
religion.  Thus  the  man  who  declares  himself 
not  a  religious  man  wipes  out,  on  scientific 
and  philosophic  groimds,  all  final  distinction 
between  himself  and  —  his  dog. 

Religion  is  this  sense  of  human  personal 
accountability  to  God.  To  deepen  this  and 
meet  its  eternal  demands  is  moral  and  spirit- 
ual evolution.  To  deny  it,  to  evade  it,  to  lose 
it,  is  devolution  now,  and  death  hereafter. 
Such  is  the  teaching,  not  only  of  Paul,  of 
Jesus  Christ,  of  the  prophets  of  the  Church, 
but  the  teachmg  of  modern  thought. 

"  I  saw  the  dead,  the  great  and  the  small, 
standing  before  the  throne;  and  books  were 
opened;  and  another  book  was  opened,  which 
is  the  book  of  life:  and  the  dead  were  judged 
out  of  the  things  which  were  written  in  the 
books,  according  to  their  works."  The  mean- 
ing of  this  is  that  human  destiny  is  placed  in 
life's  own  keeping. 

Here  we  are  in  a  world  and  universe  of  in- 
finite possibilities.    There  are  two  ways  and 


50       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

trends  of  life.  We  have  two  natures.  We 
have  impulses  to  do  wrong  and  to  do  right. 
We  live  in  an  environment  of  evil  and  of  good. 
There  is  the  double  possibility  of  a  ruined  life 
or  a  glorious  character.  The  decision  is  with 
us. 

Review  the  varied  realms  of  life  and  we  see 
the  double  issue.  There  have  been,  and  there 
are,  human  saints  and  human  fiends :  in  the 
striking  biographies  of  Scripture,  a  Paul  and 
a  Nero,  a  John  the  Baptist  and  a  Herod,  a 
Christ  and  a  Judas.  History  presents  a  par- 
allel record.  There  are  Francis  of  Assisi  and 
Lucretia  Borgia,  Thomas  a  Kempis  and  Henry 
VIII,  Oliver  Cromwell  and  Charles  II.  The 
pages  of  literature  are  but  the  reflection  of 
history  and  give  us  Bassanio  and  Shylock, 
Portia  and  Macbeth.  Civic  spheres  have  held 
a  Gladstone  and  a  Jeffreys,  a  George  F.  Hoar 
and  a  Thomas  C.  Piatt.  Business  life  gives 
us  its  George  Peabody  in  one  column  and  its 
Russell  Sage  in  another. 

He  is  neither  a  student  of  historic  annals, 
nor  an  understander  and  interpreter  of  the 
human  life  about  him,  who  can  efface  the  lines 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  57 

between  heaven  and  hell.  If  eternity  restores 
a  harmony  and  unity  it  will  take  a  tremendous 
work  to  do  it. 

There  are,  ignore  it  as  we  may,  there  are 
both  glorious  and  awful  possibilities  before  a 
human  soul,  call  them  by  the  terms  loss  and 
salvation,  heaven  and  hell,  or  any  other  terms 
you  please.  Every  moral  decision  of  every 
moral  being,  every  moral  act  of  every  human 
life,  brings  it  nearer  the  edge  or  the  center  of 
these  paths  of  life,  or,  if  you  put  it  otherwise, 
lifts  it  to  a  higher  level  or  drags  it  back  and 
downwards. 

We  may  blind  our  eyes,  we  may  sleep  the 
slumber  of  content,  we  may  quell  the  thunder 
of  conscience  to  an  unheard  whisper,  but  the 
powers  and  the  solemnities  of  eternity  are  all 
about  us.  The  laws  of  God  move  on.  And 
we  move  on  towards  the  heaven  of  a  developed 
spiritual  life,  or  towards  a  day  of  remorse  over 
a  wasted  and  a  lost  life,  by  whatever  name  we 
call  it. 

It  was  no  mental  imbecile,  it  was  no  shallow 
evangelist,  it  was  no  weak-minded  gospel 
exhorter;    it  was  Daniel  Webster  who,  when 


58       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

asked  the  greatest  thought  that  had  ever  come 
to  him,  answered,  "  My  personal  accounta- 
bUity  to  God." 

This  is  the  first  of  our  unevadible  respon- 
sibilities —  for  our  own  eternal  life  and  char- 
acter and  destiny. 

But  human  accountability  does  not  end 
here.  It  is  not  confined  to  the  solitude  of 
individual  personality.  I  often  think  of  it  as 
I  see  the  physician  bending  over  one  that  is 
hanging  between  life  and  death.  I  think  of 
it  as  I  see  the  teacher  in  the  school  intrusted 
with  the  care  of  hundreds  of  human  minds 
and  hearts.  I  think  of  it  as  I  see  business 
men  moving  among  their  fellows;  —  the  sense 
of  responsibility  for  the  lives  of  other  men. 

It  comes  to  me  with  overwhelming  force 
sometimes  as  a  minister  of  the  gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ.  I  am  charged  with  the  divine 
responsibility  of  giving  to  thousands  of  men 
and  women  their  views  of  truth,  their  ideals 
of  character,  their  visions  of  eternal  realities, 
their  inspiration  to  service.  I  have  to  do 
with  their  immortal  lives  and  with  the  deter- 
mining   of    their    destinies.    This    divinely- 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  59 

imposed  responsibility  is  not  limited  to  the 
leaders  of  men.  We  all  touch  and  move  and 
mold  each  other.  It  is  both  an  appalling  and 
inspiring  thought. 

Sometimes  it  is  a  conscious  influence.  We 
sin  against  a  brother  and  incite  him  to  sin. 
We  utter  the  unkind  disparagement  and  lead 
him  to  forsake  a  moral  effort.  We  are  false 
to  a  standard  and  he  loses  his  faith  in  good- 
ness and  religion. 

Much  of  this  subtle  influence  is  unconscious. 
So  closely  are  the  elements  of  our  moral  and 
spiritual  life  together  bound  that  every  ex- 
pressed thought  and  every  moral  act  enters 
into  the  determining,  not  of  self  alone,  but 
of  other  men. 

Nor  does  accountability  end  here.  It  ex- 
tends beyond  our  contemporaries.  It  is  not 
confined  to  age  or  generation.  Its  waves  roll 
on  to  ages  and  generations  to  come.  "  Visit- 
mg  the  iniquity  of  the  fathers  upon  the  chil- 
dren, upon  the  third  and  upon  the  fourth 
generation." 

Humanity  carries  an  awful  load  of  respon- 
sibility and  obligation;  as  individuals,  deter- 


60       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

mining  our  own  eternal  destiny  in  view  of 
both  glorious  and  grave  possibilities;  as  chil- 
dren of  the  great  family  of  God,  acting  in 
the  determination  of  each  other's  ends;  as 
perpetuators  of  the  race,  deciding  in  some 
measure  the  characters  of  men  for  ages  yet  to 
come. 

We  are  sadly  blind  and  dull,  our  hearts  are 
hardened,  if  it  does  not  sometimes  overwhelm 
us  and  lead  us  to  say  with  the  great  apostle, 
"  Who  is  sufficient  for  these  things  ?  "  Who 
is  equal  to  it? 

The  ultimate  end  of  the  gospel  is  the  regen- 
eration and  restoration  of  sinful  men  and 
women.  There  is  no  other  preaching  that 
will  accomplish  it  than  that  of  these  funda- 
mental doctrines.  The  awakening  in  the 
souls  of  men  of  the  consciousness  of  an  abso- 
lute, holy  God,  under  whose  all-seeing  eye 
they  live,  whose  laws  they  cannot  defy  with- 
out disaster,  who  hates  their  sins,  who  loves 
them  so  deeply  that  he  wants  to  give  them 
the  gift  of  his  own  infinite  righteousness,  and 
has  put  every  obstacle  he  can,  without  in- 
truding upon  the  inviolable  solitude  of  their 


MAN  IN  THE  UNIVERSE  61 

free  personality,  between  them  and  sin,  — 
this,  with  the  consequent  consciousness  of 
sm,  is  the  only  way  by  which  that  sense  of 
need  of  redemption  is  awakened,  by  which 
alone  redemption  can  be  gained.  These 
truths  all  stand  or  fall  together. 


The  Moral  Opportunity  of  Man 


Jesus  therefore  said  to  them  again,  Peace  be  unto 
you:  as  the  Father  hath  sent  me,  even  so  send  I  you,  — 
John  20 :  2L 


THE  MORAL  OPPORTUNITY  OF  MAN 


In  the  previous  chapter  we  saw  the  hu- 
man possibiUty  to  withstand  God,  to  foil  his 
attempts,  to  frustrate  his  plans  and  delay 
the  fulfilment  of  the  divine  intention.  We 
saw  that  man  had  the  moral  ability  to  inter- 
fere and  obstruct  the  moral  order  of  the  uni- 
verse. Man  has  the  power  to  defeat  and 
delay  the  moral  purposes  of  God.  We  saw 
that  this  involved  a  larger  principle ;  that  God 
has  largely  placed  the  moral  universe  in  the 
keeping  of  man.  To  a  thoughtful  man  this 
deepens  the  sense  of  human  sin  as  it  becomes 
the  violation  of  a  holy  trust. 

This  is  a  one-sided  affirmation,  and  we  will 
now  turn  to  the  reverse  aspect  of  the  thought. 
Let  the  lights  pass  over  from  humiliation  and 
confession  to  prophecy  and  aspiration,  for 
this  placing  of  the  moral  order  in  the  power 
of  man  involves  a  finer  truth.  Over  against 
man's  power  to  withstand  God  is  also  his 
potency  to  develop  the  divine  intention,  to 
bring  to  pass  the  purposes  of  God.    Just  as 


66       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

God  is  powerless  to  stay  the  human  will 
against  him,  so  it  is  also  true  that  he  not  only 
needs  to  have  this  opposition  withdrawn, 
but  that  he  can  only  bring  his  eternal  plans 
to  issue  with  human  cooperation,  as  men  be- 
come workers  together  with  him.  The  ques- 
tion is  often  asked,  ^'  Why  does  God  not  bring 
desirable  things  to  pass? "  It  is  because 
these  things  are  in  the  hands  of  man. 

We  have  always  seen  this  truth  in  Christ. 
Our  confessions  affirm,  from  the  Fourth  Gos- 
pel onwards,  that  the  moral  order  of  the 
world  was  given  into  the  hands  of  Christ. 
This  is  the  larger  meaning  of  the  Incarnation. 
One  aspect  of  Christ's  mediation  long  ago 
found  its  place  in  theology.  He  is  the  medi- 
iator  of  God's  grace  to  man.  One  other  as- 
pect of  his  mediation,  which  is  just  as  true,  is 
that  he  is  the  mediator  of  man's  divine  op- 
portunity and  tasks.  Christ  is  not  alone  him- 
self to  do  his  work  in  the  world.  He  came  to 
reveal  the  place  of  man  in  bringing  to  pass  the 
evolution  of  the  moral  order.  He  is  rightly 
emphasized  as  the  imparter  of  divine  grace  and 
salvation,  but  he  is  more  than  this;  he  is  the 


MORAL  OPPORTUNITY  OF  MAN   67 

mediator  of  man's  responsibility.  He  prays, 
'^  For  their  sakes  I  sanctify  myself,  that  they 
themselves  also  may  be  sanctified  in  truth." 
He  says  to  them,"  I  am  the  light  of  the  world," 
and  then  turns  and  says  again,  "  Ye  are  the 
light  of  the  world."  His  parting  word  is,  "As 
the  Father  hath  sent  me,  even  so  send  I  you." 

The  idea  of  the  gospel  is,  that  what  God 
and  Christ  are  to  his  disciples,  they  are  to  be 
to  other  men.  The  Incarnation  is  not  simply 
a  definite  historic  act  in  time;  it  is  continu- 
ous; it  is  ever  repeating  itself,  whenever  there 
is  an  act  of  human  goodness  done,  a  deed  of 
love  performed,  whenever  a  holy  prophecy  or 
aspiration  finds  fulfilment. 

Behold  how  true  this  is,  this  truth  that  we 
take  the  place  of  God  to  man,  that  the  moral 
and  spiritual  order  is  given  over  to  us!  Here 
is  the  child.  For  many,  many  years  the 
mother  and  father  are  God  to  that  child. 
What  he  learns  of  the  divine  qualities  is  what 
he  sees  and  hears  in  them.  How  true  it  is  of 
the  teachers  in  the  school,  and  how  sadly 
often  they  forget  it!  This  same  thing  is  true 
of  all  the  associations  of  human  life. 


68       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

To  take  another  series  of  illustrations: 
The  sympathy  of  God  is  to  assuage  the  grief 
of  man;  but  it  is  seldom  imparted  except  as 
it  comes  through  the  touch  of  some  human 
heart.  The  tears  of  sorrow  are  wiped  away, 
but  it  must  largely  be  by  human  hands. 

It  is  thus  that  men  learn  the  meaning  of 
divine  qualities.  How  do  they  learn  of 
divine  love?  Through  reading  Bibles?  To 
some  extent,  no  doubt;  but  they  learn  it  more 
from  loving  human  hearts.  How  do  they  learn 
the  beauty  of  divine  sacrifice?  By  hearing 
men  talk  about  Christ?  Somewhat,  no  doubt; 
yet  they  learn  more  from  the  divine  un- 
selfishness and  sacrifice  of  some  mother,  wife 
or  friend.  How  do  they  gain  their  faith  in 
immortality?  Through  the  declarations  of 
doctrines?  Far  more  as  some  good  and  holy 
life  passes  beyond  their  vision  and  leaves 
behind  its  own  undying  goodness.  How  do 
they  find  out  about  Christ?  From  the  Chris- 
tologies  of  men?  Through  the  confessions  of 
their  lips?  Far  more  from  the  touch  of  Christ- 
like lives.  Thus  it  is  that  the  gates  of  heaven 
are  opened  by  human  hands.    The  Incarna- 


MORAL  OPPORTUNITY  OF  MAN  69 

tion  becomes  a  perpetual  process.  Moral 
and  spiritual  life  come  by  tumian  imparta- 
tion. 

Witness,  then,  the  two  sides  of  our  truth  con- 
cerning man's  place  in  the  universe.  While, 
on  the  one  hand,  he  may  interfere  with  the 
divine  order,  on  the  other  hand  he  has  the 
power  to  put  into  operation  the  infinite  plan. 
The  divine  intention  is  thus  under  conflicting 
forces. 

While  this  is  to  be  a  universe  of  love,  men 
mingle  in  it  both  love  and  hatred.  While  it 
should  be  a  universe  of  truth,  men  have 
brought  into  it  both  truth  and  falsehood. 
These  individual  personalities  of  ours  work 
together  both  to  aid  and  to  hinder  the  com- 
ing of  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  eternal 
Being  is  not  seeking  to  be  a  sovereign  with 
force  so  much  as  he  is  to  be  a  Father  in  love. 
There  is  no  such  a  thing  as  isolated  individual 
responsibility.  Every  man  must  bear  his 
share  of  the  weight  of  the  moral  order  of  the 
universe.  That  power  is  to  hinder  or  fur- 
ther the  coming  of  the  kingdom. 

God  is  operating  on  this  world  in  Christ 


70       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

and  through  his  Holy  Spirit;  but  it  is  as  he 
does  this  through  our  human  persons. 

The  immanence  of  God  is  the  incarnation 
in  man.  The  darkness  of  our  human  hfe  has 
been  dispelled  by  light  from  heaven  in  the 
souls  of  good  and  holy  men  and  women. 
The  message  from  the  Father's  heart  has 
come  through  human  lips,  as  the  Father^s 
love  revealed  itself  in  human  lives. 

As  the  older  messages  of  Holy  Writ  have 
told  us  of  their  time,  so  in  all  time  God  has 
put  on  the  personalities  of  men  and  sought  to 
do  his  work  of  grace  through  them.  Far 
better  than  the  sense  of  God  in  hill  and  vale, 
in  sun  and  star,  and  all  the  beauties  of  the 
world  in  which  we  live,  far  better  than  in- 
spired written  page,  is  the  inspired  heart 
which  touches  close  our  own  in  common 
paths  of  daily  life,  whose  very  garment  carries 
healing  in  its  touch. 

Yes,  God  has  touched  life  in  many  ways, 
reveals  himself  in  varied  forms  —  through 
far-off  prophets  and  apostles,  through  tables 
of  his  holy  law,  but  in  a  nearer  way  through 
humble  men  and  women  in  our  very  midst. 


MORAL  OPPORTUNITY  OP  MAN  71 

Man's  place  in  the  universe  is  to  bring  to 
pass  the  will  and  the  ideal  of  God,  to  bring 
to  pass  the  infinite  intention. 

This  moral  opportunity  of  man  is  eternal. 

"  'Tis  the  divinity  that  stirs  within  us: 
'Tis  heaven  itself  that  points  out  an  hereafter 
And  intimates  eternity  to  man." 

Our  true  faith  in  the  heaven  that  is  to  be 
comes  only  as  that  heaven  sheds  its  glow  upon 
the  life  that  is.  Our  immortality  is  now%  a 
growing  of  the  spirit-life  within,  the  deepening 
of  our  love,  the  softening  of  our  hearts  wdth 
sympathy  and  tenderness,  the  sanctifying  of 
our  lives.  Thus  shall  we  put  on  immortality, 
thus  shall  our  corruptible  put  on  its  incorrup- 
tion,  and  thus,  as  Jesus  by  his  life  brought 
immortality  to  light,  we  must  do  by  follow- 
ing in  his  way.  Such  hopes  and  aspirations 
are  the  foregleams  of  eternity.  There  is  but 
one  life,  and  we  live  it  now. 

It  is  not  by  the  argument  of  men  that  we 
believe  the  life  that  is  to  come.  It  is  when 
Tve  see  a  good  and  holy  life  pass  beyond  our 
ken  that  we  are  lured  to  faith  in  the  eternal 
goodness  and  we  feel  the  certainty  of  heaven. 


n       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

Thus  he  hath  brought  immortaUty  to  hght, 
and  to  the  eye  of  faith  the  opening  vistas 
of  man's  untrodden  future  are  invested  with 
a  sweet  attractiveness  and  a  divine  glory. 
Man  has  before  him  an  eternal  opportunity. 


The  Person  of  Christ 


God,  having  of  old  time  spoken  unto  the  fathers  in 
the  prophets  by  divers  portions  and  in  divers  manners, 
hath  at  the  end  of  these  days  spoken  unto  us  in  his  Son, 
whom  he  appointed  heir  of  all  things,  through  whom 
also  he  made  the  worlds;  who  being  the  effulgence 
of  his  glory,  and  the  very  image  of  his  substance.  — 
Hebrews  1: 1-3. 


THE   PERSON   OF   CHRIST 


Thus  far  in  our  consideration  of  the  grounds 
of  theistic  belief  we  have  seen  that  man  is 
by  nature  constituted  for  God;  inherently  a 
religious  being;  that  the  normal  man  is  the 
man  of  faith.  The  Christian  faith  rests  on  a 
conception  of  God  as  the  universal,  absolute 
reason;  a  personal  spirit,  self-conscious  and 
^elf -directing;  a  being  of  moral  perfection, 
who,  in  perfect  righteousness  and  supreme 
love,  creates,  governs  and  directs  the  uni- 
verse to  a  wisely  foreseen  and  beneficent  end; 
the  supreme  thought,  the  essential  mind,  the 
infinite  intelligence,  who,  in  holiness  and  love, 
is  guiding  the  human  soul  to  goodness.  We 
discover  man  to  be  a  free  moral  being,  self- 
determining  and  self -directing;  the  hewer 
of  his  own  statue,  the  architect  of  his  own 
character,  the  arbiter  of  his  own  destiny. 
We  saw  that  he  had  abused  his  prerogatives 
of  choice  and  volition  and  had  become  a  sinful 
being. 

It  may  be  said,  however,  that  other  reli- 

75 


76       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

gions  have  dealt  with  these  truths  and  prob- 
lems m  much  the  same  way,  and  now  we  come 
to  the  distinctive  element  in  the  Christian 
faith,  which  lifts  it  infinitely  above  the  reli- 
gions of  the  ages  and  leaves  it  solitary  and 
supreme  in  the  moral  world  of  thought  and 
life.  Other  cults  have  sought  to  explain  the 
mystery  of  sin  and  suffering  and  have  taught 
methods  of  avoidance.  The  distinctive  trait 
of  the'  Christian  religion  is  that  it  tells  of  a 
way  of  salvation  from  sin,  of  a  source  of 
infinite  strength  in  suffering.  And  when  the 
weary  soul  says,  "  Where  ?  "  or  "  How  ?  '' 
its  followers  begin  to  tell  him  about  a  man 
called  Jesus  Christ.  The  center  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith  is  Christ  the  Saviour. 

Questions  of  Christology  can  be  taken  up 
understandingly  only  when  we  have  first  be- 
held the  Christ  of  history  and  of  experience. 
Let  us  look  first  at  the  simple  picture  of  the 
three  historical  Gospels.  It  is  the  picture 
of  a  natural  and  beautiful  boyhood  followed 
by  an  undiminished  manhood,  a  ministry  of 
less  than  three  years,  his  followers  a  little 
handful  of  humble  fishermen.    He  dies  im- 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         77 

heard  of  by  the  world  outside  his  httle  circle 
of  devoted  friends  and  followers.  He  is  first 
the  disciple  of  a  moving  preacher,  John  the 
Baptist,  and  becomes  the  successor  of  his 
teacher.  He  is  developed  by  disciplme.  He 
is  tempted  as  we  are.  He  suffered  just  as  we 
suffer.  He  needed  to  pray  as  we  need  to 
pray.  In  the  three  synoptic  Gospels  Jesus 
is  a  very  human  man. 

When  we  have  come  to  analyze  his  mind 
and  character  we  are  moved  by  its  greatness. 
He  is  original  in  thought,  profound  in  his  in- 
tellectual grasp  of  moral  truth.  His  courage 
is  superb.  He  dares  to  mingle  with  despised 
publicans  despite  the  disapproving  nod  of 
religious  aristocracy.  He  stands  before  Pilate 
and  Herod  and  the  high  priest  in  indifferent 
calmness.  In  righteous  wrath  he  clears  the 
desecrated  temple.  In  the  face  of  certain 
death  he  rebukes  the  expediency  of  his  dis- 
ciples, and  calmly  says,  '^  I  go  up  to  Jerusa- 
lem." He  is  as  tender  and  compassionate 
and  sympathetic  as  a  mother.  He  is  perfect 
in  self-sacrifice,  patient  and  humble.  In  all 
this  he  is  thoroughly  human. 


78       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

I  think  that  in  frankness  it  should  be  said 
that  other  men  may  have  been  just  as  original 
in  other  realms  as  Jesus  in  his.  Doubtless 
other  men  have  had  as  large  an  intellectual 
reach.  Others  have  shown  equal  courage. 
His  self-sacrifice  cannot  be  said  to  be  alto- 
gether unique.  Other  men  have  died  for 
their  fellows.  The  world  may  have  known 
men  of  his  patience  and  humility. 

Taking  Jesus  as  a  man,  then,  what  is  his 
peculiar  significance?  Every  other  character 
upon  the  pages  of  saintly  biography  has  been 
one-sided.  Does  it  exhibit  great  intellectual 
acumen?  It  lacks  patience  or  humility. 
Has  he  superb  courage?  He  is  wanting  in 
tenderness.  Is  he  bold?  He  is  not  humble. 
Is  he  tender  and  self-sacrificing?  He  is  not 
courageous.  Does  he  portray  patience?  He 
has  too  little  force  of  character.  Take  every 
character  you  know  and  it  will  bear  these 
marks  of  contrasted  strength  and  weakness. 
That  is  why  we  all  have  our  different  heroes 
among  the  great  and  saintly  souls  of  biog- 
raphy. 

That  which  impresses  us  most  strongly  in 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         79 

Jesus  is  his  complete  blending  of  contrasted 
virtues.  He  is  as  unflinching  in  his  boldness 
as  he  is  tender  in  his  compassion.  His  mar- 
velous force  of  moral  and  intellectual  insight 
is  equalled  by  his  consummate  modesty.  He 
is  almost  sohtary  in  his  self-sacrifice,  yet 
never  abject  or  deficient  in  spirit.  He  is 
eager  and  courageous,  but  just  as  patient  as 
he  is  glowing  in  enthusiasm.  While  tender, 
sympathetic  and  compassionate  to  sinners,  he 
is  never  wanting  in  the  fire  of  moral  indigna- 
tion. In  his  humility  he  never  loses  self- 
respect.  Jesus,  the  man,  is  the  superb,  the  per- 
fect ideal  of  manhood  because  of  this  perfect 
blending  of  all  the  elements  within  the  range  of 
character.  When  we  see  this  perfect  manhood 
of  Jesus  we  say.  Whatever  else  we  surrender, 
it  must  never  be  the  real  humanity  of  our 
Lord.  It  is  an  impulse  and  an  inspiration 
to  know  that  he  bore  this  character  and  that 
he  attained  it  as  we  must  attain.  It  exalts 
humanity's  moral  ideal  and  tells  us  something 
of  what  we  may  become  when  we  ^'  see  him  as 
he  is." 
Having  witnessed  this  passing  picture  of 


80       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

Jesus  as  an  exemplar  of  manhood,  we  pass  to 
a  doctrine  concerning  our  Lord  which  the 
Church  has  ever  tenaciously  held  equally 
with  that  of  his  real,  unsimulated  human 
character.  This  man  who  has  been  for  two 
thousand  years  transforming  human  life  is 
declared  to  be  a  divine  being.  Men's  hearts 
have  been  so  moved  by  their  love  and  devotion 
for  him  that  they  have  not  only  followed  him 
because  he  is  good,  but  have  hallowed  him  as 
God.  Jesus  himself  has  uttered  words  con- 
cerning his  nature  which  have  been  taken  as 
the  basis  of  this  faith. 

When,  however,  we  come  to  examine  the 
declarations  of  Jesus  in  their  totality,  we  find 
what  appear  at  first  sight  to  be  irreconcilable 
utterances.  On  one  day  he  declares,  ^^  I  and 
the  Father  are  one  "  ;  "He  that  hath  seen 
me  hath  seen  the  Father."  The  next  day, 
to  the  same  hearers,  with  equal  emphasis, 
he  asserts,  "I  can  of  myself  do  nothing"; 
"  The  Father  is  greater  than  I."  Our  ulti- 
mate purpose  will  be  to  reconcile  these  appar- 
ent contradictions  by  indicating  the  sense  in 
which  Jesus  asserts  his  oneness  to  God  — 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         81 

that  is,  his  divinity  —  by  showing  that 
which  constitutes  his  divineness.  It  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at  that  the  Church  has  had 
its  controversies  over  the  humanity  and 
divinity  of  its  Lord.  The  problem  is  no 
greater  than  that  which  confronts  us  in 
our  philosophy  and  psychology  of  ourselves. 
Who  has  ever  been  able  to  define  and  dis- 
tinguish the  human  and  the  divine  elements 
in  man? 

We  have  said  that  Christianity,  in  contrast 
to  other  religions,  offers  a  way  of  salvation. 
It  points  men  to  Jesus  Christ  and  asks  them 
to  follow  him.  But  suppose  the  earnest 
seeker  asks: 

How  do  I  know  that  this  man,  Jesus,  can  lead 
me  out  of  my  sins  and  make  me  righteous? 

The  teacher  answers : 
Because  he  is  a  divine  being. 

The  human  mind  always,  instinctively  and 
justifiably,  asks  for  evidence.  Let  us  frankly 
consider  the  attitude  of  a  host  of  thoughtful 
men  and  women  toward  certain  types  of  evi- 
dence.   It  is  an  infinitely  higher  attitude  than 


82       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

that   of   easy-going,    blind    credulity.    This 
seeker  now  asks: 

But  how  do  I  know  he  is  divine?  Show  me  your 
evidence. 

The  discussion  then  proceeds  as  follows : 

Teacher.  —  This  Jesus  whom  we  serve  was  mirac- 
ulously born.  There  were  supernatural  occurrences 
in  great  number  and  variety  incident  to  his  advent. 
Read  the  preface  to  the  Gospels  of  Matthew  and 
Luke;  the  narratives  of  the  nativity;  the  revela- 
tions to  the  shepherds;  the  experience  of  the  wise 
men  from  the  East ;  the  heavenly  visions  to  pious 
men  and  women.  Do  not  these  indicate  the  divine 
character  of  the  being  to  whom  they  relate? 

Seeker.  —  I  accept  the  main  historical  part  of  the 
Gospels.  But  the  scholars  tell  us  that  we  must 
discriminate  between  the  actual  historicity  of  the 
main  body  of  the  Gospels  and  the  legends  which 
grew  up  around  this  unique  man.  These  scholars 
tell  us  that  these  prefaces  to  these  two  Gospels  evi- 
dently did  not  belong  to  the  original  narratives. 
They  were  added  as  a  sort  of  introduction  later  on. 
They  are  highly  poetical  in  character.  In  fact,  they 
are  just  such  legends  as  grew  up  about  St.  Francis 
of  Assisi;  such  as  have  always  clustered  about  the 
memory  of  every  striking  personality.  Further- 
more, they  are  contradicted  by  the  main  body  of 
the  narrative.     One  of  the  genealogies  explicitly 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         83 

declares  Jesus  to  be  of  the  line  of  Joseph.  In  fact, 
the  earliest  manuscript  of  the  Gospels,  the  Sinaitic 
Palimpsest,  recently  discovered,  explicitly  declares 
that  "  Joseph  begat  Jesus."  Everywhere  through- 
out the  historical  parts  of  these  Gospels  Jesus  is 
assumed  to  be  the  natural  son  of  Joseph.  Indeed, 
these  stories  bear  every  mark  of  legend;  they  are 
highly  idealized,  poetic.  You  remember  that  one 
time  in  the  early  Church  a  council  came  together  to 
separate  what  they  called  the  apocryphal  stories 
from  the  authentic  narratives.  Well,  undoubtedly, 
these  legends  ought  to  have  been  set  aside  with  all 
the  others  which,  being  of  like  character,  were  dis- 
carded. The  fact  is,  on  the  testimony  of  Christian 
scholarship  itself,  on  the  evidence  of  the  Gospels 
themselves,  I  cannot  accept  these  as  historical. 

Teacher.  —  This  is  only  a  part  of  the  chain 
of  evidence.  Behold  the  miracles  he  performed! 
He  cast  out  demons.  He  turned  water  into  wine. 
He  raised  the  dead.  He  walked  on  the  sea.  He 
quieted  its  waves  and  billows.  Are  not  these  un- 
answerable? 

Seeker.  —  No,  by  no  means  unanswerable.  I 
have  been  reading  the  works  of  your  Christian  schol- 
ars, the  men  who  teach  your  preachers,  men  who 
give  their  lives  and  talents  in  consecration  to  the 
work  of  studying  these  Gospels  under  every  advan- 
tage, and  they  say  that  there  must  be  discrimina- 
tion used  here;  that  some  of  these  are  not  well 
attested;  in  fact,  that  the  evidence  for  those  which 


84       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

seem  to  transcend  natural  law  is  uncertain.  Some 
are  very  late;  earlier  narratives  know  nothing  of 
them;  they  are  late  accretions  of  the  same  nature 
with  the  other  apocrypha.  However,  even  if  these 
be  granted,  the  same  New  Testament  represents 
other  men  as  performing  these  same  wonders. 
Therefore,  if  Peter  and  Paul  did  these  works,  they 
are  divine,  too,  and  we  have  more  than  one  Christ. 
These  at  least  do  not  prove  any  unique  divinity  for 
him  who  worked  them.  Jesus  himself  admitted 
that  some  of  his  opponents  cast  out  devils. 

Teacher.  —  But  there  is  the  resurrection  of  Jesus. 

Seeker.  —  That  is  true ;  the  evidence  for  a  resur- 
rection is  there.  But  I  find  two  views  among  your 
Christian  scholars  and  theologians.  Many  of  them 
regard  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  as  spiritual  and  in 
no  sense  physical.  They  hold  that  most  of  the  ac- 
counts are  more  naturally  interpreted  on  this  sup- 
position, and  that  those  which  seem  to  represent  it 
as  physical  are  exaggerations  or  legends.  Indeed, 
Paul,  whose  letters  are  the  earliest  literature  we 
have  in  the  New  Testament,  earlier  than  the  Gos- 
pels, and  many  years  earlier  than  some  of  them,  un- 
doubtedly conceives  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  as 
a  spiritual  phenomenon,  and  of  the  appearances  of 
Jesus,  as  like  the  one  to  himself,  spiritual  manifes- 
tations. This  seems  to  me  the  more  probable  view ; 
in  fact,  the  only  possible  one.  Now,  if  this  be  so, 
then  Jesus'  resurrection  is  the  same  one  we  await. 
Paul  is  right  in  grounding  our  resurrection  in  that 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         85 

of  his  Lord.  Hence,  it  no  more  proves  Jesus'  divin- 
ity than  our  resurrection  hope  and  faith  involves 
our  divinity.  I  think  Paul  was  right  in  his  view. 
It  is  a  higher  spiritual  conception. 

And  now  you  call  my  attention  to  the  ascension 
story.  In  all  probability  this  is  a  highly  poetic  rep- 
resentation and  not  to  be  taken  as  cold  prose.  It 
is  figurative,  and  the  truth  it  contains  is  that  of  the 
ethical  and  spiritual  exaltation  of  Jesus.  But,  in 
any  event  whatsoever,  it  does  not  prove  Jesus* 
divinity.  The  same  Bible  similarly  pictures  the 
ascension  of  Elijah  and  the  translation  of  Enoch. 
Therefore,  according  to  your  proof,  they  are  divine. 

You  ask  me  if  I  have  read  those  Old  Testament 
prophecies  which  are,  in  a  literal  and  detailed  and 
mechanical  way,  fulfilled  in  Jesus?  Yes,  I  have 
read  the  prophecies.  I  have  also  read  what  modern 
commentators  say  of  them,  namely,  that  except 
in  an  ideal  sense,  they  have  no  reference  to  Jesus 
whatever.  We  could  take  any  one  of  them  and  apply 
it  to  other  men  in  the  same  way  that  the  editor 
of  the  first  Gospel  does  to  Jesus.  At  any  rate,  a  set 
of  coincidences  like  these  would  have  no  bearing  on 
the  divine  nature  of  Jesus. 

And  at  this  point  we  could  well  imagine  our 
remonstrant  adding  in  conclusion: 

Let  me  point  you  to  some  things  Jesus  said  and 
to  some  things  he  did  not  say.  He  never  once 
mentions  his  miraculous  birth.     He  not  only  does 


86       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

not  appeal  to  it  when  he  declares  his  sonship  to 
God,  but  he  never  even  mentions  it.  He  rebuked 
the  scribes  for  their  literalizing  of  prophecy  relative 
to  the  Messiah.  And,  marvelously  enough,  when 
asked  for  "  signs  "  he  peremptorily  refused  them 
and  declared  the  generation  seeking  signs  an  "  evil 
and  adulterous  "  one.  Evidently  Jesus  did  not  pro- 
pose to  rest  his  claims  on  such  evidence,  and  I  do  not 
believe  that  he  ever  meant  that  you  should  do  so.  I 
would  like  to  love  and  follow  Jesus.  I  would  like  to 
believe  him  a  divine  being,  but  I  cannot  do  it  on 
these  grounds. 

Again  and  again  have  we  met  this  man, 
and  again  and  again,  may  I  venture  to  say  it, 
he  has  left  us  unanswered  and  unsatisfied. 
Such  a  thinking  man  sets  us  to  thinking.  We 
go  home  and  look  into  our  Bibles  and  we  find 
things  we  never  saw  before,  and  we  are 
troubled.  Now  our  question  is:  Is  there  an 
answer  to  such  a  seeking  soulf  Is  there  a  re- 
sponse that  will  convince  him  that  we  love  and 
follow  a  divine  Master?  I  profoundly  believe 
there  is,  and  I  am  going  to  try  to  give  it. 

Let  us  take  our  New  Testaments,  turn  to  the 
words  of  Jesus,  and  let  him  interpret  his  own 
gospel,  declare  concerning  himself.    Then  let 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         87 

us  examine  him  and  see  what  manner  of  being 
he  is.  Let  us  interpret  his  divinity  from  the 
words  that  fall  from  his  lips,  and  from  his  per- 
sonality, his  mind,  his  consciousness,  his  life. 
Let  us  see  just  what  Jesus  means  by  his 
"  oneness "  with  the  Father,  and  in  what 
sense  he  declares  his  subordination  to  the 
Infinite,  and  whether  these  two  affirmations 
are  consistent  with  each  other.  We  may  be 
called  upon  to  interpret  these  conceptions 
somewhat  differently  from  our  past  method. 
It  may  be  that  we  shall  be  called  upon  to  base 
our  idea  of  Jesus'  divine  supremacy  on  differ- 
ent grounds.  Let  this  not  disturb  us  if  they 
be  loftier  grounds.  Let  us  not  hesitate  to 
change  our  point  of  view  for  a  higher  one. 
Remember  that  substitution,  displacement, 
is  the  eternal  law  of  progress. 

In  order  that  I  may  avoid  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  purpose  in  view,  I  will  make  one 
categorical  declaration,  whose  grounds  I  pro- 
pose to  analyze.  I  make  it  unhesitatingly 
and  unfalteringly.  It  is  this:  The  Christian 
faith  demands,  as  a  -final  and  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  its  being,  that  it  he  declared  in  unwaver- 


88       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

ing  accents  that  Jesus  was,  in  a  real  and  vital 
sense,  a  consuhstantial  member  of  the  human 
race.  In  equal  emphasis  with  any  other  as- 
pect of  Christian  truth  Jesus  must  remain, 
in  the  faith  of  to-day,  a  man  who  shared 
man's  every  joy  and  sorrow,  every  conflict 
and  temptation;  who  attained  by  discipline; 
who  struggled  and  overcame,  sharing  every 
experience  of  our  humble,  human  life.  Chris- 
tianity must  never  for  a  moment  lose  from  the 
fundamentals  of  its  faith  the  doctrine  of  the  real 
humanity  of  Jesus. 

There  is  one  other  truth  which,  if  it  fall,  in- 
volves in  its  ruins  the  whole  structure  of  the 
faith.  Christianity  is  bereft  of  its  divine  sanc- 
tion and  authority,  and  thus  of  all  real  author- 
ity, if  its  belief,  held  unflinchingly  through 
these  long  centuries,  in  the  divinity  of  Jesus 
be  disproved  or  doubted.  The  church  that 
discards  it  ceases  to  be,  in  any  vital  sense,  a 
Christian  church.  He  who  does  not  hold  it 
as  the  center  and  source  of  his  gospel  ceases, 
at  the  moment  of  his  denial  or  his  doubt,  in 
the  highest  and  completest  sense,  to  be  a 
teacher  of  Christianity.     The  supreme  faith 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         89 

of  the  Church  and  the  ministry  is  their  certi- 
tude that  their  Lord  and  Master  is  a  divine 
being. 

Deny  the  sense  of  the  Infinite  in  Christ,  the 
presence  of  the  eternal  love,  surrender  the 
faith  that  his  nature  is  the  nature  of  God,  and 
the  race  has  forfeited  its  moral  ideal;  the 
pathway  of  human  life  toward  its  goal  of  in- 
finite goodness  is  merged  into  desert  sands, 
trackless  and  lightless;  for,  with  the  denial 
of  the  consubstantiation  of  the  human  Jesus 
with  the  infinite  Deity,  humanity  loses  the 
pledge  of  its  own  consubstantiation  with  the 
Father.  On  these  two  truths  hangs  our  whole 
system  of  belief:  the  human  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
the  Son  of  man;  Jesus  the  Christ,  the  Son  of 
God, 

Our  question  is  not,  Is  Jesus  divine?  It  is 
rather,  What  do  we  mean  when  we  affirm 
this?  I  feel  sure  that  the  answer  to  the  sec- 
ond will  involve  the  answer  to  the  first.  I 
have  pointed  out  one  line  of  interpretation, 
and  have  given  the  objections  to  it,  which 
prevent  many  very  good  and  earnest  men  and 
women  from  accepting  our  Lord  as  divine 


90       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

if  they  must  do  it  on  those  grounds.  I  am  going 
to  lay  every  one  of  those  questions  aside.  It  is 
enough  to  say  here  that  these  problems  con- 
cerning Jesus'  relation  to  the  physical  world, 
the  manner  of  his  physical  birth,  his  control 
over  nature,  need  not  enter  into  our  present 
theme.  Our  faith  in  the  divineness  of  our 
Lord  does  not  rest  on  these  things.  That  is 
not  the  way  to  interpret  his  nature.  It  is  true 
that  Jesus  taught  nothing  as  to  his  metaphy- 
sical relation  to  God  or  concerning  his  rela- 
tion to  the  natural  laws  of  the  physical  uni- 
verse. It  is  true  that  he  disclaimed  "  signs  " 
as  evidence  of  his  character  and  nature,  and 
sternly  rebuked  those  who  sought  to  test 
them  on  these  grounds.  It  is  true  that  the 
correspondence  of  his  life  to  prophetic  details 
had  no  interest  for  him  whatever.  Hence, 
I  propose  that  we  adopt  the  method  of  Jesus; 
that  we  begin  by  a  thoughtful  study  of  his 
character,  and  by  that  means  seek  to  appre- 
hend his  nature.  The  final  test  of  truth  is  not 
the  decrees  of  the  Church  or  the  elucidations 
of  the  church  Fathers.  We  must  turn  from 
the  disciples  to  the  teacher  himself.     The 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         91 

disciple  is  not  greater  than  his  Lord.  There- 
fore, when  Jesus  sets  aside  these  things  as 
proofs  of  his  authority,  we  must  set  them 
aside,  whether  the  traditional  interpretation 
of  them  be  correct  or  not.  I  propose  that  we 
look,  first,  at  what  Jesus  said;  then  at  what 
he  was  and  is. 

When  we  consider  the  words  of  Jesus  which 
refer  to  our  problem,  we  find  two  sets  of  dec- 
larations, given  with  equal  emphasis.  In  one 
he  seems  to  claim  a  unique  and  solitary  divine- 
ness;  in  the  other  he  declares  his  human  limi- 
tation, his  subordination  to  the  Father.  Con- 
sider such  expressions  as  these : 

In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  he  quotes  an 
Old  Testament  command.  He  abrogates  it, 
utterly  sets  it  aside,  with  the  declaration: 
*'  But  /  say  unto  you."  He  announces  with- 
out any  modification,  "  Heaven  and  earth 
shall  pass  away,  but  my  words  shall  not  pass 
away."  With  the  gesture  of  sovereign  au- 
thority he  declares  sms  forgiven.  He  inti- 
mates that  somehow  men  are  to  be  judged  by 
their  faith  in  him.  "  All  things  "  are  given 
into  his  hand  by  the  Father.    Likewise  all 


92       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

"  authority."  He  calls  men,  "  Come  unto 
me."  "  One  is  your  Master,  even  Christ." 
Seeking  faith  in  himself,  he  asks,  ''  Dost  thou 
believe  on  the  Son  of  God?  "  He  bids  men 
pray  in  his  name.  He  affirms,  "All  authority 
hath  been  given  imto  me  in  heaven  and  on 
earth."  He  delegates  authority  to  his  dis- 
ciples. He  associates  himself  with  the  Infi- 
nite:"  My  Father  worketh  .  .  .  and  I  work." 
He  is  "  the  bread  of  life,"  "  the  light  of  the 
world."  Listen  to  these  astounding  words: 
"I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life  "  ;  "  I  am 
the  way,  the  truth,  and  the  life."  All  of  these 
statements  are  but  affirmations  of  our  text: 
"/  and  the  Father  are  one" 

It  may  be  objected  that  these  are  from  the 
Fourth  Gospel,  written  late;  from  a  narrative 
which  does  not  altogether  record  actual  say- 
ings of  Jesus.  In  answer,  I  candidly  admit 
that  a  large  proportion  of  the  teachings  of 
Jesus  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  are  put  in  the 
writer's  own  language;  but  I  suppose  no 
scholar  denies  that  at  least  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  sayings  in  this  Gospel  are  founded 
on  genuine  logia.    After  a  careful  comparison 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST        93 

of  this  class  of  sayings  in  this  Gospel  with 
others  in  the  synoptic  Gospels,  I  am  con- 
vinced that  these  rest  in  each  case  on  a  genuine 
logion.  In  any  event,  there  are  enough  say- 
ings of  this  tenor  in  the  first  three  Gospels  to 
bear  out  the  idea  that  Jesus  made  a  unique 
claim  for  himself. 

A  careful  study  of  these  utterances  indicates 
that  they  are  to  be  interpreted  in  what  we  may 
call  the  ethical  or  religious  sense.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  phrase,  ''  All  authority  hath 
been  given  unto  me/^  He  adds  as  a  therefore ^ 
"  Go  and  teach."  Clearly  his  sovereignty  is 
with  regard  to  moral  and  spiritual  things,  and 
in  no  sense  with  relation  to  the  physical  uni- 
verse. In  every  case  he  refers  to  the  realm 
in  which  he  confined  his  work,  the  realm  of 
spiritual  life.  But  this  by  no  means  lessens 
the  wonder.  These  claims  are  imique.  The 
voice  sounds  divine,  not  human,  as  we  use  the 
latter  term.  In  these  expressions  our  Lord 
definitely  claimed  divine  authority. 

Let  us  consider  some  of  the  other  set  of  say- 
ings. Here,  again,  he  is  just  as  forceful.  He 
says,  *'  I  speak  not  of  myself,  but  the  Father 


94       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

commandeth  what  I  shall  say  and  what  I  shall 
teach."  He  declares  that  he  does  his  work 
by  the  power  of  God.  He  admits  that  he  has 
no  authority  to  appoint  positions  on  the  right 
hand  or  the  left  in  the  kingdom.  It  is  not 
his  prerogative.  He  affirms,  concerning  the 
judgment,  his  own  ignorance.  Even  in  speak- 
ing of  God  he  says,  "  I  ascend  to  my  Father 
and  your  Father,  to  my  God  and  your  God." 
He  concedes,  "  I  can  of  myself  do  nothing." 
All  these  may  be  comprehended  in  one  explicit 
declaration:  ''My  Father  is  greater  than  7." 
We  need  to  notice  one  significant  thing, 
namely,  that  while  these  sayings  explicitly 
declare  limitation,  they  do  so  in  such  a  way 
as  we  should  never  think  of  doing.  They 
really  declare  Jesus'  exaltation  above  our  con- 
cept of  human  prerogative  as  clearly  as  they 
do  his  subordination  to  Infinitude. 

"I  and  the  Father  are  one  J'  Yet,  "My 
Father  is  greater  than  /."  Can  these  be 
reconciled?  Are  they  consistent  with  each 
other?    Does  the  second  deny  the  first? 

Let  us  see  what  we  mean  when  we  use  the 
word  "  divinity."     There  are  two  ways  in 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         95 

which  this  term  may  be  interpreted.  We 
use  it  in  both  senses  in  reference  to  our  con- 
cept of  God.  We  speak  of  the  divine  as  wit- 
nessed in  nature.  We  speak  of  an  eternal 
power  controlhng  the  physical  universe.  We 
see  it  in  the  lightning's  flash,  in  the  age-long 
revolution  of  the  starry  host  of  heaven,  in 
the  rising  and  the  setting  sun.  It  speaks  to 
us  in  the  whirlwind's  voice,  the  reverberations 
of  the  thunder's  roar  among  rock-riven  hills. 
Here,  our  conception  of  divineness  would  be  in 
the  attributes  of  omnipotence,  omniscience, 
omnipresence,  in  the  physical  world.  The  main 
concept  is  that  of  a  God  of  power.  This  gives 
what  has  been  called  natural  religion.  But 
there  is  another  idea  of  the  God  in  the  soul. 
We  see  him  in  control  of  the  moral  universe. 
Here  we  behold  what  w^e  call  the  character  of 
God.  The  main  concept  is  that  of  a  God  of 
holy  love.  This  gives  us  what  we  call  re- 
vealed religion.  One  set  of  concepts  has 
reference  to  the  physical  and  metaphysical. 
The  other  deals  with  the  moral,  the  spiritual, 
the  psychological.  What  was  Jesus'  realm? 
Did  he  come  to  make  a  physical  and  meta- 


96       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

physical  revelation,  or  a  moral  and  spiritual? 
Did  he  come  to  reveal  the  law  of  gravitation 
or  the  law  of  living?  Did  he  come  to  give  us 
science  or  religion?  Did  Jesus  operate  in  the 
realm  of  natural  or  of  revealed  religion?  Is 
the  significance  of  the  revelation  of  the  Father 
in  the  Son  its  portrayal  of  the  laws  of  physics, 
or  is  it  the  clear  shining  forth  of  the  moral 
goodness  of  God,  his  character,  his  love? 

I  think  this  is  our  clue.  Jesus  may  declare 
his  subordination  to  the  Father  in  the  matter 
of  omniscience,  and  yet  say  that  he  and  the 
Father  are  one.  Is  he  not  dealing  in  spiritual 
terms?  Does  he  not  clearly  mean,  ^^  My  will 
is  the  Father's  will;  my  character  is  one  with 
God's  "  ? 

Does  this  not  bring  us  back  to  the  human 
Christ?  Does  it  not  make  them  one  and  the 
same?  Yes;  for  they  are  one  and  the  same. 
I  propose  now  that  we  go  back  to  the  starting- 
point,  that  we  begin  all  over  again  with  the 
human  Jesus.  For  it  is  the  human  Jesus  that 
is  divine;  it  is  the  divine  Christ  that  is  human. 
Let  us  join  the  Twelve  and  go  about  with  him 
for  a  little  while,  uniting  ourselves  to  him  just 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         97 

as  the  first  disciples  did.  On  one  occasion 
these  disciples  went  up  into  a  mountain  with 
their  Teacher.  There  they  witnessed  what 
has  been  called  the ''  Transfiguration."  "  He 
was  transfigured  before  them;  and  his  face 
did  shine  as  the  sun,  and  his  garments  be- 
came white  as  the  light.  ...  A  bright  cloud 
overshadowed  them;  and  behold,  a  voice  out 
of  the  cloud,  saying.  This  is  my  beloved  Son, 
in  whom  I  am  well  pleased;  hear  ye  him.  .  .  . 
And  lifting  up  their  eyes,  they  saw  no  one, 
save  Jesus  only." 

Let  us  come  to  the  mountain  and  look  at  the 
lineaments  of  the  countenance  of  him  whom 
we  call  Master.  If  we  will  but  gaze  at  that 
countenance  we  shall  behold  it  shining  as  the 
sun;  we  shall  behold  him  clothed  with  a 
transcendent  light;  and  we  shall  hear  the  voice 
saying,  ''  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  hear  ye 
him."  And  we  shall  look  up  and  see  no  man, 
save  Jesus  only.  We  go  up  to  the  mount 
with  Jesus  of  Nazareth;  we  return  with  the 
transfigured  Christ,  the  transcendent,  divine 
Son  of  God.  And  when,  a  little  after,  he  shall 
say  unto  us,  "  Whom  say  ye  that  I  am? '' 


98       THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

we  shall  answer  with  Peter,  '^  Thou  art  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God." 

There  is  a  great  host  of  earnest,  Christian 
men  and  women  who  accept  Jesus  as  the 
spiritual  guide  and  teacher  of  the  race,  who 
cannot  accept  the  faith  of  the  Church  in  his 
imique  divinity.  Their  attitude  is  illogical. 
There  is  another  class  who  accept  it  without 
a  thought  as  to  what  they  mean  by  it.  Their 
attitude  is  self-debasing.  Of  the  men  who 
meet  the  doctrine  with  outright  denial  and 
those  who  do  so  with  blind  admission,  the  one 
class  is  as  far  wrong  as  the  other.  The  ultra- 
Unitarian  says,  '^  The  fine  moral  character  of 
Jesus  is  enough."  The  conservative  Evan- 
gelical declares,  ''  Acceptance  of  his  divinity 
is  sufficient."  The  answer  to  the  Evangelical 
is  that  it  is  necessary  to  ethically  apprehend 
this  divineness  if  it  is  to  become  our  moral 
ideal.  The  answer  to  the  Unitarian  is  that 
character  involves  a  nature;  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  abstract  character.  It  inheres  in  a 
being,  and  that  being  must  have  a  nature. 
The  answer  to  both  is  that  we  come  to  the 
one  by  means  of  the  other.    We  apprehend 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST         99 

the  divine  nature  of  Jesus  when  we  compre- 
hend his  ethical  character,  his  rehgious  con- 
sciousness. 

Lay  aside  all  questions  regarding  the  rela- 
tion of  Christ  to  the  physical  universe.  We 
must  not  first  settle  on  our  theory  and  then 
say  that  the  mind  and  life  of  Christ  must 
conform  to  this  theory.  We  must  ascertain 
the  mind  and  consciousness,  the  personality 
of  Jesus,  and  then  on  this  basis  construct  our 
theory  of  his  nature.  My  purpose  is  to  con- 
fine our  thought  to  the  spiritual  realm  and 
to  show  the  ineffable  transcendence  of  the 
divine  Christ  by  the  unclassifiableness  of  his 
character  with  what  we  call  humanity.  We 
will  not  say,  ''  Christ  is  divine,  therefore  per- 
fect." Rather  we  will  say,  "  If  we  find  him  to 
be  morally  perfect,  therefore  he  is  divine." 

I  profoundly  believe  that  reason  finds  no 
place  for  Jesus  in  what  may  be  fitly  termed 
purely  human  categories.  These  categories 
are  the  conceptions  covering  actual  and  uni- 
versal human  experience.  The  image  of  the 
Son  of  man  is  in  infinite  contrast  with  the 
image  of  the  sons  of  men.    The  disciples  be- 


100     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

gan  with  Jesus,  the  Man  of  Nazareth,  the 
human  teacher;  they  ended  with  a  divine 
Lord.  Let  us  join  the  disciples  and  see  if  this 
shall  be  our  experience.  We  will  begin  with 
an  attempt  to  account  for  Jesus  on  purely- 
human  principles  and  see  if  these  will  explain 
him. 

One  of  the  first  of  these  principles  is  that 
of  heredity.  Here  it  will  be  readily  admitted 
that  we  have  no  cause  adequate  to  our  effect. 
Other  principles  are  those  of  environment 
and  training.  We  find  nothing  in  the  he- 
redity, environment,  or  training  of  Jesus  to 
account  for  a  man  who  has  transformed  so- 
ciety, who  abides  as  the  central  figure  of  the 
race  for  two  thousand  years  and  who  com- 
mands its  well-nigh  universal  love  and  adora- 
tion. Right  at  this  point  we  touch  the  real 
miracle  of  the  four  Gospels.  We  need  not 
to  argue,  for  no  one  has  ever  sought  to  ac- 
count for  Jesus  on  the  grounds  of  heredity, 
environment  and  training. 

Let  us  pass  on  to  consider  what  manner  of 
man  this  is.  As  we  do  so  we  will  mentally 
contrast  him,  at  every  point,  with  the  highest 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       101 

single  product  of  the  race  and  with  the  com- 
bined product  of  all  the  single  characters  that 
the  pages  of  saintly  biography  have  pictured. 

Who  has  ever  claimed  for  the  hero  whose 
character  he  records  an  unspotted  childhood? 
Who  has  ever  given  us  the  picture  of  a  com- 
pleted life  which  has  in  it  no  process  of  recti- 
fication? Development  there  was,  but  it 
was  not  by  the  way  of  correction.  This  is 
just  the  picture  we  have  of  Jesus. 

Consider  his  character  in  maturity.  No 
one  thinks  of  denying  its  moral  beauty.  No 
one  affirms  that  Jesus  was  destitute  of  force, 
of  that  spirit  which  we  call  manly.  Where 
else  have  we  a  character  thus  uniting  and 
blending  pure  goodness  with  a  supreme,  un- 
hampered, solid  manhood? 

Most  marked  of  all  is  the  contradiction 
to  our  estimate  of  actual  human  character 
in  the  religious  experience  of  Jesus.  His  pro- 
cess is  the  inversion  of  that  in  other  men. 
Can  you  conceive  of  a  human  religiousness 
that  does  not  start  with  penitence?  Are  not 
the  most  holy  and  righteous,  and  most  saintly 
of  the  saints,  those  who  are  most  sorrowful 


102     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

and  repentant?  Here  is  a  man  who  never 
expresses  a  single  regret.  He  boldly  chal- 
lenges, "  Which  of  you  convicteth  me  of 
sin?  "  Let  the  best  man  you  know  stand 
forth  before  his  fellows  with  any  such  defiance. 
Let  any  man  declare  his  religiousness  in  the 
same  breath  that  he  denies  the  sentiment  of 
repentance,  without  a  tear  of  sorrow  for  the 
past,  without  a  contrite  heart,  void  of  a  single 
confession  of  wrong.  If  Jesus  did  know  sin, 
then  we  have  a  sinful  man  becoming  religious 
in  the  profoundest  sense,  yet  by  some  other 
road  than  that  of  repentance.  In  other 
words,  we  have  a  religion  that  is  not  human. 
How  profound  a  contradiction!  On  the  other 
hand,  grant  his  sinlessness  and  how  could  he 
be  more  divine?  We  have  here  an  infinite  ex- 
ception to  the  course  of  human  development. 
There  could  be  no  wider  deviation. 

The  most  significant  thing  in  Jesus'  con- 
sciousness and  life  is  this  perpetual  reconciling 
of  human  contrasts.  It  meets  us  at  every 
point.  He  never  strikes  us  as  gay  and  easy- 
going, nor  does  he  impress  us  with  austerity. 
Himself  without  sin,  he  betrays  the  deepest 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       103 

sympathy  with  the  deepest  sinners.  His 
sorrows  are  so  profoundly  joyous  that  they 
do  not  excite  our  pity.  He  seems  thoroughly 
human,  yet  never  worldly;  susceptible  to  the 
compassion  that  sin  incites,  but  never  suscep- 
tible to  sin.  Compare  all  this  with  our  actual 
humanity.  Men  have  liberal  views  of  the 
joys  of  life,  but  never  without  merging  at 
some  point  into  laxity.  Are  they  rigid 
against  sins?  They  become  overscrupulous 
and  lose  liberty.  Do  they  magnify  freedom? 
They  become  negligent  and  lose  the  sense  of 
moral  obligation.  I  do  not  say  that  men 
have  never  approached  consistency  at  some 
one  of  these  points,  but  they  have  never 
gained  it.  Note  how  perfectly  he  unites 
what  we  call  the  passive  virtues  —  himiility, 
meekness,  patience  —  with  a  character  whose 
total  impression  is  that  of  grandeur.  He 
never  fails  or  falters,  whether  it  be  in  petty 
disturbances  or  in  great  crises.  He  tells  his 
disciples  that  they  must  expect  bitter  perse- 
cutions, in  the  same  breath  that  he  declares 
to  them  his  bequest  of  joy  and  peace. 
Have  you  ever  considered  the  vastness  of 


104     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

Jesus'  undertaking  in  contrast  with  the  means 
at  his  disposal?  He  stands  within  the  circle 
of  his  little  handful  of  fishermen  and  publi- 
cans and  seriously  proclaims  that  he  has 
come  to  morally  re-create  the  race.  He  as- 
serts his  work  and  influence  to  be  timeless. 
Even  at  the  very  end,  when  the  little  band  of 
foflowers  have  denied  and  fled,  he  still  de- 
clares that  his  mission  is  to  elevate  the  race  to 
God.  What  man,  with  any  such  end,  would 
have  selected  the  means  and  methods  of 
Jesus?  He  refuses  elevation  and  honor. 
He  eats  with  sinners.  Without,  for  a  single 
instant,  descending,  he  yet  associates  with 
them.  He  founds  a  moral  nation  on  such 
material  as  this. 

Consider  him  as  a  teacher.  He  does  not 
draw  from  the  stores  of  learning.  He  simply 
instructs  out  of  his  own  consciousness  and 
experience.  He  is  the  truth  he  teaches.  As 
he  teaches  he  does  not  conform  to  human 
expectations,  nor  does  he  use  human  methods. 
His  truth  is  that  of  intuition,  yet  he  is  never 
called  upon  to  rectify  a  single  declaration. 
He  is  as  simple  as  he  is  profoimd,  and  as  pro- 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       105 

found  as  he  is  simple.  His  very  supernatural- 
ness  is  natural. 

Looking  at  the  character  of  Jesus  as  a 
whole,  we  come  upon  a  striking  contrast  to 
the  characters  of  other  men  the  world  has 
called  great.  The  halo  that,  seen  at  a  dis- 
tance, surrounds  our  heroes  is  always  more 
or  less  dispelled  as  we  get  closer  to  them. 
But  with  Jesus  it  is  not  so.  The  nearer  we 
get  to  the  other  men  who  are  above  us,  the 
closer  we  find  they  are  bound  to  our  common, 
frail  humanity.  It  is  this  principle  in  human 
relations  that  has  given  rise  to  the  familiar 
proverb  concerning  "  familiarity  "  and  ^'  con- 
tempt." But  with  Jesus,  the  nearer  we  ap- 
proach him  the  farther  away  he  is. 

What  I  have  called  attention  to  in  these 
illustrations  holds  true  at  every  single  point 
in  the  character  and  life  of  Jesus.  It  reaches 
its  height,  however,  when  we  try  to  analyze 
his  mind  and  heart.  When  we  make  a  psy- 
chological study  we  come  upon  an  unaccount- 
able consciousness  in  Jesus.  Try  to  put  his 
astonishing  assertions  into  the  minds  of  men. 
Listen  to  such  words  as  these  from  the  purest 


106     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

man  you  ever  knew:  ''  I  came  forth  from  the 
Father";  ''I  am  the  Hght  of  the  world," 
^'  the  bread  of  Hfe  "  ;  "I  will  draw  all  men 
unto  me";  ''Come  unto  me";  "Follow 
me."  And  yet  Jesus  never  gives  us  the  im- 
pression of  what  we  term  conceit.  Imagine 
the  best  of  men  the  world  has  known  declaring 
"/  and  the  Father  are  one";  "My  Father 
is  greater  than  /";  "My  Father  worketh 
hitherto,  and  /  work."  We  must,  at  this 
point,  either  dethrone  Jesus  as  a  pretender, 
set  him  aside  as  an  insane  enthusiast,  or  else 
admit  his  divine  consciousness.  This  self- 
consciousness  of  Jesus  must  either  determine 
his  worthlessness  or  his  supreme  worth.  He 
is  either  less  than  our  humanity  or  more.  If 
a  mere  assumption,  he  has  succeeded,  for  two 
thousand  years,  in  maintaining  this  stupen- 
dous pretension.  The  fact  is,  whatever  holds 
true  in  all  our  experience  in  other  men,  is 
reversed  in  him. 

We  worry  about  the  miracles.  Why,  it  is 
all  miracle.  You  ask  at  what  point  the  unique- 
ness of  Jesus  comes  in?  It  is  all  unique.  In 
what  is  he  transcendent?  He  is  altogether 
transcendent 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       107 

Men  have  been  going  up  and  down,  allying 
themselves  with  a  sinful  and  adulterous  gen- 
eration, joining  the  questioning  scribes  and 
Pharisees,  saying,  "  Show  us  a  sign,  give  us  a 
miracle,  that  we  may  believe  in  thee."  They 
have  been  asking  for  some  little  spark  of 
light  to  shine  out  of  some  remote  corner  of 
the  heavens.  And  behold,  the  glorious  sun- 
light has  been  streaming  into  their  faces  for 
two  thousand  years  and  they  have  refused  to 
see  it.  They  have  been  trying  to  find  some 
one  point  which  would  indicate  the  transcend- 
ence of  Jesus,  while  all  the  time  he  is  altogether 
transcendent. 

What  is  the  difference  between  Jesus  the 
Christ,  and  our  actual  humanity?  It  is  the 
infinite  difference  between  perfection  and  im- 
perfection —  the  eternal  contrast  between 
sinlessness  and  sin.  Can  anything  be  diviner 
than  that  which  is  morally  and  spiritually  per- 
fect? What  is  the  explanation  of  this  great 
moral  miracle?  There  is  only  one.  God  was 
with  him  in  full  measure.  He  was  altogether 
led,  inspired,  upheld,  by  the  Infinite.  What 
is  this  that  we  behold  in  him?  It  is  the  reve- 
lation of  the  Father.     The  apostle  has  ex- 


108     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

plained  it:  ''God  was  in  Christ,  reconciling 
the  world  unto  himself."  It  is  because  he 
and  the  Father  are  one.  He  who  sees  him  sees 
the  Father.  We  believe  that  Jesus  the  Christ 
is  divine,  because  we  see  in  his  character  a 
manifestation  of  the  character  of  God;  in  his 
perfection,  the  divine  life.  As  we  gaze  at  his 
countenance  he  is  transfigured  before  us;  his 
face  shines  as  the  sun;  his  garments  are 
clothed  with  light.  The  bright  cloud  of  a 
divine  glory  overshadows  us,  and  we  hear  a 
voice  saying,  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  hear 
ye  him."  We  behold  the  light  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Thus  are  we  led  back  by  the  inevi- 
table processes  of  thought  to  the  divine  na- 
ture of  Jesus  Christ. 

This  careful  consideration  of  the  character 
of  the  historical  Jesus  indicates  at  every  point 
his  transcendence  above  our  realized  human- 
ity taken  at  its  highest  and  best.  The  great 
miracle  which  we  considered  is  not  only  one 
that  took  place  two  thousand  years  ago.  It 
has  been  perpetually  followed  and  continu- 
ously verified  during  these  twenty  centuries. 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       109 

The  perennial  transforming  power  of  the  per- 
son and  teaching  of  the  Christ  of  to-day  bears 
witness  to  the  divine  character  and  nature  of 
the  Redeemer  of  the  race.  Signs  and  won- 
ders are  given  before  our  very  eyes  —  mir- 
acles, which,  not  in  the  physical  but  in  the 
moral  and  spiritual  realm,  are  the  higher  and 
more  significant  just  because  they  are  opera- 
tive in  this  higher  sphere. 

The  supreme  difference  between  Jesus  and 
what  we  call  humanity  is  an  infinite  ethical 
difference.  There  may  be  other  distinctions, 
but  only  that  which  is  ethical  has  the  highest 
worth  and  nieaning.  If  character  itself  is 
transcendent  and  has  its  springs  in  the  heart 
of  infinite  goodness,  then  a  character  which 
is  ethically  perfect  becomes  supremely  and 
solitarily  surpassing. 

Goodness  is  the  supreme  and  significant 
element  in  divinen^ss.  Jesus'  highest  evi- 
dence of  sonship  to  God  is  that  he  hears  God's 
liketiess,  possesses  the  Spirit  of  the  Holy,  mani- 
fests his  love,  partakes  of  his  will  and  goodness. 
There  may  be  other  evidences,  but  I  confess 
I  care  little  about  them.    It  is  a  miserable 


110     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

waste  of  time  to  quarrel  over  them.  The 
immortal  legacies  of  Jesus  to  the  race  are 
these:  (1)  He  gave  us  our  loftiest  concep- 
tion of  the  will  and  character  of  God :  God  is 
the  Father  of  the  race;  (2)  he  revealed  that 
will  and  character  in  himself:  he  that  hath 
seen  him  hath  seen  the  Father.  The  divinity 
of  Jesus  is  the  divinity  of  this  perfect  righteous- 
ness, of  supreme  love,  of  transcendent  moral 
purity,  of  holy  virtue.  He  has  left  us  the 
sound  of  a  divine  voice,  the  reproduction  of 
a  divine  life. 

Is  the  difference  between  Jesus  and  man, 
then,  a  difference  of  kind  or  of  degree? 
This  is  mere  juggling  with  words.  There  can- 
not be  two  kinds  of  goodness.  The  goodness 
of  man,  if  there  is  any  such  thing,  must  be 
the  same  in  kind  as  the  goodness  in  God.  If 
we  talk  about  two  kinds  of  goodness  we  be- 
come polytheists.  If  there  be  two  kinds  of 
divinity,  there  must  be  two  divinities,  and 
God  is  not  the  one,  only,  all-comprehending, 
sole-directing  power  of  the  universe.  There 
are,  however,  differences  in  degree  which  prac- 
tically become  differences  in  kind.    Evolution 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       111 

reveals  all  differences  of  kind  as  the  resultants 
of  the  accumulation  of  differences  in  degree. 
Suppose  we  consider  the  difference  between 
man  and  brute  to  be  a  difference  of  kind. 
Suppose  we  consider  that  between  good  men 
and  bad  to  be  one  of  degree.  The  difference 
between  the  best  and  worst  of  men  is  cer- 
tainly greater  than  that  between  the  worst 
of  men  and  the  best  of  brutes.  Thus  does 
our  difference  in  degree  become  a  greater 
difference  than  a  difference  in  kind.  The 
divineness  of  Jesus  is  that  of  a  complete, 
perfected,  ideal  goodness,  which  infinitely 
excels  and  eternally  exceeds  our  actual 
humanity. 

Let  us  now  see  the  significance  of  this  one- 
ness with  man  and  this  oneness  with  God, 
revealed  in  Jesus,  as  it  relates  to  man  and 
his  moral  ideal  and  goal.  Jesus  is  the  pledge 
and  the  interpretation  of  the  truth;  ^^  now 
are  we  children  of  God."  He  is  the  pledge 
of  the  consubstantiality  of  humanity  with 
God;  the  interpreter  of  the  substantial  kin- 
ship of  God  with  his  children.  Thus  it  is 
that  we  believe  in  God  through  Jesus  Christ. 


112     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

Thus  have  we  "  one  mediator  also  between 
God  and  man,  himself  man,  Christ  Jesus." 
In  nothing  is  declared  more  explicitly  the 
identity  in  nature  of  himianity's  childhood 
with  the  divine  fatherhood  than  in  that  lofty 
ideal  set  forth  by  Jesus :  "  Ye,  therefore,  shall 
be  perfect,  as  your  heavenly  Father  is  per- 
fect." There  can  never  be  attainableness 
without  essential  unity  between  that  which  is, 
and  that  which  is  to  be.  Upon  this  faith  in 
the  presence  of  the  divine  life  in  the  human 
soul  rests  our  sole  hope  of  an  immortal  life. 

Humanity  is  lost  if  it  be  not  that  the  char- 
acter of  Jesus  is  imitable  and  reproducible  in 
his  followers;  if  Christ  be  a  mere  portrait  to 
gaze  upon,  and  not  a  model  to  follow.  The 
moral  life  of  God  in  Christ  is  the  moral  life  for 
man,  or  he  has  none.  The  example  of  Jesus 
is  the  standard  for  his  brethren.  Remove 
this  as  an  ethical  ideal  and  we  are  absolved 
from  all  moral  obligation.  The  life  of  Jesus 
Christ  is  the  life  for  man.  The  will  of  Jesus  is 
the  will  for  man.  The  spirit  of  Jesus  is  the 
spirit  to  be  nurtured  in  his  true  followers. 
The  character  of  Jesus  is  the  goal  of  his 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       113 

disciples.    That  which    he    is  they  are  to 
become. 

If  this  moral  ideal  is  perfect  it  can  be  noth- 
ing less  than  that  which  inheres  in  God.  If 
Jesus  is  this  perfect  moral  ideal  he  is  divine. 
We  are  sons  of  God.  He  is  the  Son  of  God. 
He  is  actually  what  man  is  prophetically. 
In  him  we  behold  affinity  with  the  Father. 
This  is  the  pledge  and  the  interpretation  of 
the  essential  kinship  of  the  children  of  God  on 
earth  with  their  Father  who  is  in  heaven. 
If  the  moral  life  of  Jesus  has  its  source  in  the 
Infinite,  and  if  the  moral  life  of  Jesus  is  the 
moral  life  for  man,  then  it  is  only  as  conscious 
sonship  with  God  is  elicited  in  us  that  we  can 
ever  be  hopeful  of  attaining  unto  the  life 
which  he  himself  has  declared  we  must  strive 
to  gain.  If  the  moral  character  of  Christ  is 
the  moral  character  to  be  sought  by  his  fol- 
lowers, that  of  his  followers  must  have  as  its 
source  the  same  source  that  his  life  has.  His 
prayer  is  that  as  he  is  one  with  the  Father,  so 
his  own  may  become  one  with  the  Father 
and  with  him.  This  is  the  lofty  ideal  and 
the  hope  of  its  attainment  as  taught  by  Jesus. 


114     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

Here,  then,  is  the  meaning  of  those  two 
attitudes  of  faith  to  which  the  Church  has 
unflinchingly  held, — the  humanity  of  Jesus 
and  his  divine  nature.  The  consubstantiation 
of  the  divine  Jesus  with  man  reveals  the  con- 
substantiation  of  humanity  with  God.  He 
is  the  revelation  of  the  essential  oneness  of 
the  human  and  the  divine.  The  principle  of 
identity  and  difference  which  prevails  through- 
out the  universe,  both  moral  and  physical,  is 
here  exemplified.  Reason  is  one  and  the  same 
in  God,  the  absolute,  and  man,  the  limited 
reason.  And  yet  the  mind  of  God  is  not  the 
same  as  the  mind  of  man.  God  is  immanent, 
and  at  the  same  time  transcendent.  Jesus  is 
immanent  in  our  humanity.  He  is  tran- 
scendent at  the  same  time.  The  actual  con- 
trast of  Jesus  and  humanity  is  the  actual  con- 
trast between  humanity  and  God.  The  essential 
kinship  of  Jesus  with  humanity  is  the  revela- 
tion of  the  essential  kinship  of  humanity  and 
God.  If  we  lose  the  idea  that  the  Christ 
is  of  the  nature  of  God,  we  lose  our  pledge  of 
the  essential  relation  between  the  human  and 
its  divine  ideal.    Then  our  moral  ideal  is 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       115 

gone  as  a  possible  attainment.  Gone  as  a 
possible  attainment,  it  is  as  worthless  as  the 
cup  of  Tantalus.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  an 
infinite  ocean  of  which  we  may  never  drink. 

We  have  seen  that  the  contrast  between 
Jesus  and  humanity  is  made  on  the  very 
grounds  of  his  human  nature.  Admit  (and 
who  in  the  face  of  Scripture  and  consciousness 
will  deny  it?)  that  there  is  a  divine  nature  in 
humanity.  Admit  that  we  have  perfection  in 
Jesus,  and  you  admit  the  divine  transcendence 
of  Jesus.  If  moral  character  is  good,  if  the 
good  is  divine,  with  its  source  in  the  heart 
of  God,  then  perfection  of  character  means 
the  realization  of  a  divine  perfection,  and 
we  have  a  divine  Christ,  with  his  very  be- 
ing grounded  in  the  Godhead,  solitary  and 
supreme. 

The  question  arises  at  this  point:  Does 
this  mean  that  mankind  will  ever  realize  the 
perfection  that  is  in  Christ?  With  the  apostle 
we  must  say,  "  It  doth  not  yet  appear  what 
we  shall  be."  It  looks  as  though  incomplete- 
ness would  be  our  state  through  all  time;  for 
is  it  not  a  truth  in  our  study  of  self-develop- 


116     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

ment  that  the  nearer  we  approach  the  goal 
the  farther  it  recedes?  Are  we,  then,  infinite, 
viewed  in  the  Hght  of  our  possibiUties?  This 
I  feel  we  can  neither  assert  nor  deny.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  every  step  in  advance  renders 
the  next  step  more  possible. 

And  yet  each  advancing  step  only  seems 
to  open  our  eyes  more  clearly  to  the  immeas- 
urable distance  between  us  and  our  hopes. 
The  more  we  know  of  God,  —  that  is-;  the 
more  Godlike  we  become,  —  the  farther  does 
the  divine  ideal  recede.  Is  not  this  pursuit 
of  a  flying  goal,  a  goal  which  seems  to  fly 
faster  than  its  pursuers,  dismaying?  No;  for 
at  the  same  time  that  we  realize  its  growing 
unattainableness,  we  realize  that  we  are  at- 
taining. While  it  does  not  give  us  a  detach- 
able end  which  may  some  day  cease  to  be 
an  end,  it  does  give  us  a  mode  of  life  and 
an  incentive  to  moral  development.  The 
question,  What  shall  we  be?  leads  us  to  an 
unfathomable  mystery.  In  kind  we  are  to  be- 
come like  Christ.  In  degree?  We  have  no 
answer.  But  we  may  rejoice  that  the  shad- 
ows of  the  things  that  be  are  eternally  pierced 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       117 

by  the  infinite  sunlight  of  the  things  that  are 
to  be. 

Let  us  now  review  our  thought  so  far.  We 
have  seen  that  what  might  seem  to  put  Jesus 
on  the  level  of  the  race,  namely,  that  he  is 
the  perfect  moral  ideal  revealed  in  human- 
ity for  humanity,  is  the  real  indication  of 
his  infinite  differentiation  from  the  race. 

We  have  seen  that  the  divinity  of  our  Lord 
does  not  rest  upon  one  or  two  mysterious 
signs,  but  that  he  is  altogether  one  great 
standing  moral  miracle.  If  his  character  is 
divine,  his  nature  must  be  determined  by 
his  character.  Be  his  nature  divine,  he  is 
a  divine  being. 

We  have  asserted  with  equal  emphasis  his 
real  humanity  and  his  divine  character;  that 
this  unity  is  the  revelation  and  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  oneness  of  humanity  and  God; 
that  this  unique  and  perfect  sonship  of  Jesus 
with  the  Father  is  the  ground  of  the  imperfect 
but  prophetic  sonship  of  the  children  of  men. 

"  Seeing  it  is  God,  that  said,  Light  shall 
shine  out  of  darkness,  who  shined  in  our 
hearts,  to  give  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of 


118     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ. '^ 
—  Paul. 

"  Now  are  we  children  of  God,  and  it  is 
not  yet  made  manifest  what  we  shall  be.  We 
know  that  we  shall  be  like  him;  for  we  shall 
see  him  even  as  he  is."  —  John. 

The  gromid  of  the  one  disciple's  lofty  ideal 
and  hope  is  in  the  truth  of  the  confident 
affirmation  of  his  fellow  apostle. 

"  I  say  the  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Ghrist, 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it." 

The  supreme  and  sovereign  personage  of 
history  is  Jesus  Christ.  To  grasp  the  mag- 
nitude of  Jesus'  person  is  the  divinest  task 
of  human  thought.  For  the  intelligence  of 
men  he  is  the  source  of  an  exhaustless  con- 
templation. The  loftiest  of  human  minds  are 
reverent  in  his  immeasurable  presence  and 
with  the  wise  men  of  the  East  can  offer  but 
their  homage,  and  at  his  feet  cast  their  slight 
morsels  of  frankincense  and  myrrh  and  offer 
at  his  shrine  the  incense  of  their  genius. 
This  supreme  Mind,  whose  words  of  holy 
wisdom  have  transformed  our  thought  and 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       119 

life,  knows  no  intellectual  companions.  Be- 
tween him  and  the  intellects  of  loftiest  reach 
there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed.  His  greatness, 
unencompassed  by  the  mind  of  man,  calls  for 
the  heart.  For  the  interpretation  of  his  in- 
effable, transcendent  person  only  the  clear- 
ness of  a  pure  heart  suffices.  The  attitude 
of  men  to  Jesus  is  the  final  and  determining 
computer  of  their  length  and  height  and 
breadth  of  vision  and  of  life. 

The  fact  of  his  eternal  presence,  his  heal- 
ing of  the  sick  of  heart,  his  raising  of  men's 
dead  and  dying  spirits,  the  translation  into 
life  of  the  utterance  of  his  lips,  have  been  the 
only  glories  of  the  race  since  his  appearing. 
The  story  of  the  fleeing  shadows  in  the  heart 
of  man  and  the  world's  larger  life  have  been 
but  the  fulfilment  of  his  own  annoimcement 
that  he  was  come  to  be  the  light  of  men  and 
of  the  world.  Every  advancement  of  the 
human  mind  in  the  interpretation  and  the 
deepening  in  conception  of  man's  moral  life  is 
but  the  fulfilment  of  this  vision  of  himself  to 
his  own  soul,  every  growing  love  of  man  for 
man  its  realization.    The  sacrifice  and  service 


120     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

of  our  life,  which  are  its  finest  beauties,  are  but 
the  adumbrations  of  his  fight  and  testify  to 
the  preeminence  of  Calvary. 

He  performed  the  loftiest  mental  achieve- 
ment of  the  race.  His  ideal  of  a  kingdom 
of  heaven  upon  the  earth,  his  conception  of 
the  fatherhood  of  God,  his  apprehension  of 
a  universal  brotherhood  of  men,  his  interpre- 
tation of  eternal  human  life,  reached  a  moral 
and  spiritual  height  which  absolutely  knows 
no  end.  All  our  upliftings  of  the  moral  ideal, 
of  our  discoveries  of  goodness,  are  but  the 
mind  of  Christ  translated  to  the  minds  of  men. 

To  recover  his  unutterable  vision  is  the 
loftiest  aim  of  human  mind  and  heart.  To 
see  his  God,  to  grasp  his  interpretation  of 
our  own  souls,  is  the  supreme  achievement 
set  before  the  race.  His  consciousness,  so  far 
as  gained,  is  its  superlative  possession.  To 
know  Jesus  Christ  would  be  to  reach  the 
height  and  depth  of  spiritual  knowledge. 

God  is  the  first  and  last,  the  beginning 
and  the  end,  of  all  his  works.  In  him,  human- 
ity, the  best  of  his  creations,  finds  its  meaning 
and  its  end.    The  Infinite  has  ever  been  with 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST        121 

men,  but  in  completeness,  only  once,  in  Jesus 
Christ.  And  ever  since  the  angel  annunciated 
to  the  mother,  '^  The  Lord  is  with  thee,  .  .  . 
the  Holy  Spirit  shall  come  upon  thee,  and  the 
power  of  the  Most  High  shall  overshadow 
thee,"  Jesus  has  meant  this  to  man.  The 
incarnation  was  this  pledge  of  the  divine 
above,  and  with  our  human  life,  the  revela- 
tion of  the  heaven  that  lies  about  us  in  our 
infancy  and  constantly  follows  all  our  days. 

God  with  us!  —  a  human  form  which  was 
the  perfect  garment  of  the  eternal  Spirit. 
The  meaning  of  it  all  is  this:  that  Jesus  had 
the  mind  and  heart  of  God  and  brings  before 
the  race  as  its  supreme  attainment  the  gain- 
ing of  that  mind  and  heart. 

The  person,  then,  of  Jesus  calls  for  the 
homage  of  the  race.  He  is  an  eternal  contrast 
to  the  human  life  to  which  he  came  and  comes. 
The  difference  between  his  sinlessness  and 
human  sin  is  an  eternal  moral  contrast. 
Against  the  somber  background  of  our  dark- 
ened human  lives  the  perfection  of  his  spirit 
is  as  the  sun  at  night.  His  exhaustless  person 
calls  for  a  supereminent,  unique  distinction. 


122     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

His  eternal  contrast  between  sinlessness  and 
sin  is  the  eternal  contrast  between  God  and 
man,  and  when  men  bow  the  knee  to  Jesus 
Christ  they  worship  and  adore  the  God  whom 
he  ineffably  reveals. 

And  the  reverent  man  who  seeks,  as  men 
will  seek,  and  ought  to  seek,  an  adequate 
interpretation  of  Jesus  to  the  intellect  —  be 
at  the  same  time  his  heart  and  motive  pure  — 
will  find  himself  lifted  beyond  the  humanity 
in  which  he  stands,  will  find  himself  upon 
the  height  of  Tabor,  gazing  at  a  countenance 
transfigured  before  him,  at  a  face  which  shines 
as  the  sun,  at  garments  white  as  the  light; 
while  the  cloud  of  a  divine  glory  overshadows 
him,  and  in  his  ears  resounds  the  voice, 
''This  is  my  beloved  Son:  hear  ye  him." 
The  God  of  Jesus  is  the  highest  reach  of  human 
thought.  The  Jesus  of  God  knows  nothing 
higher,  and  he  that  hath  seen  him  hath  seen 
the  Father. 

The  solitary  perfect  moral  human  light 
of  these  two  thousand  years  is  clouded  with 
ambiguous  shadows,  the  nature  of  the  Infinite 
unknown,  the  faith  of  men  and  all  their  moral 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       123 

life  uncertain,  the  goal  of  their  achievement  is 
unsure  and  the  whole  present  scheme  of 
human  progress  fails,  unless,  with  an  author- 
ity that  is  divine,  with  an  ideal  that  is  the  form 
of  God,  Jesus  Christ  is  God  with  us. 

But  the  vision  and  the  revelation  have  not 
here  their  final  end  for  human  life.  The  Son 
of  God  is  likewise  Son  of  man.  The  unity 
of  Christ  with  men  must  be  as  clear  as  the 
distinction.  There  is  in  Jesus  a  deeper  ele- 
ment, a  deeper  meaning  for  the  race,  than  the 
apprehension  of  the  Lord's  divine  identity. 
He  must  become  revealer  of  the  God  within 
our  human  life  and  selves;  his  mission  to  re- 
store the  broken  image  and  the  heavenly 
superscription  on  the  race. 

The  relation  of  the  eternal  Son  with  the 
eternal  Father  is  the  ultimate  ideal  relation 
between  men  and  God  —  the  actual  in  Jesus, 
the  prophetical  in  man.  Without  the  im- 
manence of  Christ  his  heavenly  transcend- 
ence can  have  no  vital  meaning  for  the  sons 
of  men.  And  as  his  actual  contrast  between 
himself  and  men  is  the  eternal  ground  of 
faith,  so  must  his  essential  kinship  with  the 


124     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

race  be  its  eternal  ground  of  hope.  And  if 
we  bring  these  truths  together,  we  shall 
have  a  Christ  who  is  the  very  substance  of 
the  Father,  with  his  being  grounded  in  the 
Godhead,  solitary  and  supreme.  And  we 
shall  have  a  hun^ian  Christ,  the  supreme 
human  soul,  who  lives  among  and  moves 
upon  the  heart  and  life  of  men,  lifting  the 
race  to  his  own  vision  of  its  divine  ideal  and 
to  a  consciousness  of  its  own  inseparable  life 
in  God.  The  incarnation  was  in  man  then, 
that  it  might  be  in  men.  In  Jesus,  God  be- 
came partaker  in  the  life  of  men  that  men 
might  be  partakers  in  the  very  life  of  God. 

The  human  life  of  Jesus  was  the  life  of 
God  in  man,  and  the  eternal  life  of  men  can 
be  none  other.  Thus  hath  he  brought  our 
human  immortality  to  light. 

This,  then,  becomes  the  deeper  meaning 
of  the  advent;  the  witness  of  divinity  within 
our  humble,  human  lives,  touched  by  the 
divine  without  in  Christ,  to  bring  it  to  ful- 
filment. It  is  the  pledge  and  the  interpre- 
tation of  God's  eternal  life  within  his  children. 
The  transcendence  of  the  Master,  by  his  imma- 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       125 

nence,  becomes  the  pledge  of  the  transcend- 
ence of  our  present  selves. 

No  loftier  view  of  Christ  can  human  mind 
conceive.  No  larger  meaning  in  him  for  the 
race  could  be  invented.  To  apprehend  the 
moral  magnitude  and  contemplate  the  spir- 
itual force  of  Jesus  is  the  solitarily  supreme 
desire  of  the  mind  of  man,  and  to  appropriate 
his  life  the  loftiest  endeavor  of  a  human  soul. 
In  him  the  Infinite  is  reachable  to  human 
contemplation.  He  is  God  with  us.  Through 
him  attainable  to  human  aspiration,  he  is 
God  within  us.  The  Son  of  God,  the  witness, 
and  the  earnest  of  the  heavenly  childhood  of 
the  race,  he  is  the  sovereign  possession  of  man- 
kind. 

Jesus,  thus,  in  himself  gave  the  answer  to 
man's  quest  for  the  Eternal;  "  God  is  love.^^ 
This  was  the  revelation  that  Jesus  brought 
to  the  vision  of  men.  We  affirm  the  God- 
likeness  of  Christ.  We  must  make  the  equal 
affirmation  of  the  Christlikeness  of  God. 
Nineteen  hundred  years  ago  there  occurred 
the  supremely  significant  scene  of  history. 
It  was  the  crucifixion  of  the  Son  of  God. 


126     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

Every  upward  movement  of  the  race,  and 
all  its  finer  life,  have  come  simply  as  fast  as 
those  who  followed  Jesus  have  w^alked  up 
the  ascent  of  Calvary.  Thus,  the  cross  has 
been  the  emblem  of  man's  finest  hopes. 

What  is  its  filial  meaning?  Is  it  a  satis- 
faction of  the  Divine  wrath?  There  is  an  ad- 
justment in  the  collocation  of  thought  by 
which  it  may  be  put  that  way  with  logical 
sequence.  Does  it  satisfy  God's  vengeance? 
Yes,  just  as  you  would  satisfy  your  vengeance 
against  the  heathen  by  sending  your  son  or 
daughter  to  a  mission  field.  Was  it  a  reve- 
lation of  the  awfulness  of  human  sin?  Yes, 
not  only  as  a  defiance  of  the  Divine  sover- 
eignty, but  also  as  trampling  upon  the  Divine 
love.  Its  supreme  significance  was  its  reve- 
lation of  the  appeal  of  the  infinite  affection. 
That  which  is  hard  for  the  mind  is  often 
simple  for  the  heart.  If  you  want  to  know 
the  nature  and  the  character  of  God,  go, 
look  at  Jesus  Christ. 

By  sin  man  may  crucify,  and  crucify  again, 
the  divine  affection,  but  on  the  third  day  it 
will  rise  to  be  crucified  again. 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST       127 


"  God,  in  the  being  of  his  Son,  makes  his  eternal  coun- 
sels known: 
Where  love  in  all  its  glory  shines,  and  truth  is  drawn 
in  fairest  lines." 


The  Sovereignty  of  Christ 


But  I  say  unto  you.  —  Matthew  5:  28. 

While  he  was  yet  speaking  .  .  .  behold,  a  voice  out 
of  the  cloud,  saying.  This  is  my  beloved  Son  .  .  .  hear 
ye  him.  —  Matthew  17: 6. 


THE   SOVEREIGNTY   OF   CHRIST 


The  comprehensive  note  of  the  gospel  is 
that  of  absolute,  final,  sovereign  authority. 
It  is  the  constant  impression  of  the  utterances 
of  Jesus.  It  is  the  eternal  suggestion  of  his 
mysterious  personality. 

We  have  seen  that  religious  thought  con- 
cerning Jesus  has  wandered  far  afield  in  its 
emphasis  upon  such  questions  as  those  relat- 
ing to  miracles.  The  supreme  power  of  our 
highest  Christian  thought  is  associated  with 
the  moral  and  spiritual  nature  of  Christ.  The 
Christian  faith  is  not  a  set  of  philosophic  ideas. 
It  is  the  power  of  a  person.  To  the  disciples 
he  said,  "  Follow  Me,"  and  they  followed  him. 
They  did  not  know  why  they  followed  him. 
He  did  not  silence  disputation  by  counter- 
disputation.  He  did  it  by  the  solemn  affir- 
mation of  himself.  In  the  Garden  they  fell 
back,  and  at  Calvary  they  trembled  before 
his  sovereign  person.  It  is  true  that  Jesus 
uttered    striking    truth.    He    rebuked;     he 

131 


132     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

warned;  he  besought;  he  instructed.  But 
as  one  enters  into  the  heart  of  the  Gospels 
the  most  impressive  thing  is  an  impression, 
mysterious,  solemn,  compelling,  the  impress 
of  a  solitary,  sovereign  personality.  In  the 
highest  sense  it  is  this  that  is  the  finer  element 
in  discipleship  to  Christ  to-day.  We  really 
do  not  believe  in  Jesus  because  of  his  gospel, 
so  much  as  we  believe  in  his  gospel  because 
of  Jesus. 

There  are  two  schools  of  thought  to-day, 
the  school  of  Ritschl  and  the  school  of  Calvin. 
In  the  displacement  of  the  latter  by  the 
former  the  idea  of  the  sovereignty  of  Christ 
has  assumed  a  larger  place  than  that  of  the 
sovereignty  of  God  because  the  Mediator 
is  closer  to  us  than  that  which  he  reveals 
to  us.  The  sovereignty  of  God  and  the  su- 
premacy of  Christ  have  become  one  and  in- 
separable, co-equal  and  eternal,  now  and  for 
ever.  The  mind  of  man  has  spent  itself  in 
loftiest  endeavor  in  its  effort  to  comprehend 
the  Infinite.  It  has  proved  an  unending 
quest.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  person 
of  Jesus.    It  is  as  mysterious,  as  solemn,  as 


SOVEREIGNTY  OF  CHRIST      133 

infinite,  as  the  being  of  the  eternal  God.  Just 
as  theology  has  succeeded  theology,  so  Chris- 
tology  has  followed  upon  Christology.  In 
each,  man  has  ever  been  seeing,  learning  more 
but  never  exhausting.  It  is  the  quest  of  a 
receding  goal.  The  more  we  learn  of  Christ 
the  deeper,  the  profounder,  the  more  mys- 
terious and  transcendent  he  becomes;  and 
the  Christlikeness  of  God  is  as  real  and  as 
illuminating  a  conception  as  the  Godlikeness 
of  Christ.  For  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
vision  of  mankind,  the  magnitude  of  Jesus' 
person  is  the  object  of  an  exhaustless  contem- 
plation. Just  as  that  personal  compulsion 
led  those  earlier  disciples  and  transformed 
them,  so  it  is  that  the  story  of  the  fleeing 
shadows  in  the  world  of  human  life  now  for 
two  thousand  years  has  been  but  the  fulfil- 
ment of  his  own  prophecy  that  he  was  come 
to  be  the  Light  of  the  World.  As  his  form 
has  become  clearer,  the  world  has  become 
better.  The  spiritual  consciousness  of  Christ 
is  the  eternally  enduring  object  of  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  men.  Thus,  in  him  was  intro- 
duced into  the  world  not  merely  a  new  deca- 


134     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

logue,  not  only  a  restored  prophetism,  but  an 
absolutely  new  order  of  life.  I  utter  it  with 
the  confidence  of  absolute  certainty;  the 
better  moral,  spiritual  order  of  the  world, 
so  far  as  it  is  better,  is  simply  the  light  of 
Calvary  on  human  life.  Any  better  life,  any 
finer  vision,  to  be  realized  in  any  sphere  or 
time  within  the  moral  order,  will  come,  and 
can  come,  only  by  the  yielding  of  the  hearts  of 
men,  and  of  the  constitutions  of  human  insti- 
tutions, to  the  sovereignty  of  Christ. 

'^  But  I  say  unto  you."  His  word  has 
never  been  transcended.  The  true  appre- 
hension of  Jesus  is  not  in  the  utterances  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  but  in  the  mysterious 
scene  upon  the  mountain  of  transfiguration. 
"  This  is  my  Son  .  .  .  hear  ye  him."  It  is  the 
eternal  voice  from  heaven  to  the  race  to-day. 
The  vision  and  the  voice  must  both  be  seen 
and  heard.  This  is  the  order  of  Christian 
evidence;  he  who  spiritually  apprehends 
the  person  will  be  mysteriously,  solemnly 
commanded  by  the  utterance.  The  order 
of  experience  will  be  both  the  mount  of 
vision  and  the  Sermon  on   the  Mount.    To 


SOVEREIGNTY  OF  CHRIST      135 

those  who  see  the  vision,  the  voice  will  be  the 
sovereign  compulsion  of  human  thought  and 
life.  This  is  the  world's  deepest  need  to-day 
and  the  sole  solution  of  its  profoundest  prob- 
lems. To  serious,  thoughtful  men  its  prob- 
lems are  serious  and  sometimes  dreadful. 
Without  the  help  of  God  an  earnest-minded 
man  would  not  be  able  to  bear  the  weight  of 
his  own  heavy  heart.  Without  the  light  of 
Christ  the  shadows  of  human  life  would  be 
impenetrable. 

First  of  all,  the  sovereign  voice  of  Jesus  is 
the  ultimate  authority  for  Christian  thought 
and  faith.  Here  we  find  much  disorder, 
unrest  and  doubt.  Men  are  in  question 
concerning  the  reality  and  the  nature  of 
God;  the  being  of  man;  the  reality  of  sin; 
the  certainty  of  judgment;  and  the  deter- 
minations of  destiny.  Where  shall  they  turn 
for  the  ultimate  word?  To  the  Council  of 
Nicsea?  To  the  utterances  of  Chalcedon,  or 
Trent?  To  whom  shall  they  turn?  To  the 
remnant  of  John  Calvin's  thought,  or  to 
Arminius?  To  the  bishops  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church  who  have  recently  seen  fit 


136     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

to  form  a  final  judgment?  I  dare  say,  No. 
The  supreme  personal,  individual  authority 
is  Christ. 

At  the  marriage  feast  in  Cana,  Mary  simply 
and  confidently  turned  to  the  men  and  said, 
"  Whatsoever  he  saith  unto  you,  do  it."  So 
we  may  say :  "  Whatever  he  says  to  you, 
think  it,  accept  it."  This  is  the  first  element 
in  the  order  of  Christian  discipleship.  Learn 
the  thought  of  Christ  and  try  to  live  by  the 
guidance  of  that  thought.  There  is  no  other 
name  given  under  heaven  or  among  men 
whereby  the  world  of  thought  can  be  saved 
from  its  doubts,  denials  and  distresses.  By 
submission  to  Christ  the  world  of  Christian 
thought  will  emerge  from  the  shadows.  While 
the  wise  men  of  the  East  were  offering  their 
myrrh  and  the  incense  of  their  genius  at  the 
infant  shrine,  the  unwise  men,  as  they  tended 
their  flocks  upon  the  plain,  were  also  hearing 
the  heavenly  hosts.  So  the  simplest  minds 
and  the  profoundest  intellects  may  sit  to- 
gether at  the  feet  of  Christ.  "  But  I  say 
unto  you  ";  "  Hear  ye  him."  Our  theology, 
our  Christian  faith,  must  be  determined  by 
the  sovereign  thought  of  Christ. 


SOVEREIGNTY  OF  CHRIST      137 

The  situation  is  more  appalling  when  we 
consider  the  solemn,  serious  problems  of  the 
social  order.  Christ  is  interested  in  the  way 
that  men  treat  each  other.  It  may  seem 
preposterous,  but  I  am  willing  to  affirm  it; 
we  have  a  solution  of  the  deep,  dark  problems 
of  rich  and  poor,  cultured  and  uncultured, 
good  and  bad;  of  the  questions  of  heredity, 
environment  and  opportunity.  Over  all 
this  tumult  a  voice  may  be  heard,  '^  But  I  say 
unto  you  ";  and  another  voice  echoing  from 
the  other  mountain,  "  Hear  ye  him." 

And  what  does  he  say?  Let  us  gather  this 
human  society  upon  the  mountainside  before 
him,  first  the  one  side  and  then  the  other, 
for  there  would  be  two  sides.  He  speaks: 
"  Blessed  are  the  humble  ";  '^  Blessed  are  the 
merciful  ";  ^'  Blessed  are  the  peacemakers." 
Over  against  the  selfishness  of  men,  over 
against  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
he  puts  his  "  I  say  unto  you  ";  "  Love  your 
enemies  "  ;  "  Forgive  men  ";  "  Judge  them 
not  ";  "  One  is  your  Master,  and  all  ye  are 
brethren  "  ;  "A  new  commandment  I  give 
unto  you,  that  ye  love  one  another,  as  I  have 
loved  you  ";   ^'  He  that  saveth  his  life  shall 


138     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

lose  it;  and  he  that  loseth  his  life  shall  save  it  '^* 
^'  As  ye  would  that  men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye 
also  to  them  likewise."  And  after  the  sermon 
he  lifts  his  hands  above  them,  and  he  says, 
^'  Kneel  down  together  side  by  side,  touching 
one  another  in  common  sympathy  and  com- 
mon needs;  now  say,  and  say  it  all  together, 
'  Our  Father.'  "  After  the  gathering  he  goes 
out  to  dine.  A  poor  fallen  creature  comes  and 
sheds  her  tears  at  his  feet.  Simon  has  for- 
gotten the  sermon  and  the  prayer,  until  the 
Master  rises,  looks  him  in  the  face,  and  says, 
^'  Simon,  she  is  a  poor,  low  creature,  but  she 
is  also  your  sister.  She  has  lost  the  beauty 
of  virtue,  but  she  lost  it  living  in  that  one- 
room  tenement  of  yours."  This  is  the  im- 
perative word  of  Jesus  to  society,  absorbed 
in  its  corrupt  pleasures  and  selfish  isolations. 
Jesus  Christ  is  the  socialist,  his  gospel  is  the 
socialism  for  our  day. 

Who  does  not  look  in  fear  and  trembling 
upon  the  world  of  industry  and  the  commer- 
cial order?  Jesus  is  interested  in  these  prob- 
lems whether  his  Church  is  or  not.  I  mean 
the  questions  of  wages,  of  hours,  of  the  servi- 


SOVEREIGNTY  OF  CHRIST      139 

tucle  of  women  and  children,  of  the  conditions 
of  dividends  and  profits.  His  clear  eye  traces 
much  resulting  iniquity  back  to  the  degrading 
conditions  of  labor.  He  is  supremely  con- 
cerned with  the  ethics  of  business.  He  sees 
with  a  pierced  heart  these  two  great  armies 
encamped  over  against  each  other  in  their 
mutual  bitterness  and  hate.  To  the  one  he 
says,  "  Your  labor  is  a  divine  opportunity." 
To  the  other  he  says,  ^'  The  control  of  men  is 
a  holy  trust."  This  is  his  answer  to  the  men 
of  business  who  tell  us  that  these  are  business 
questions  for  business  men  and  not  religious 
questions  for  the  pulpit. 

Again  Jesus  calls  them  also  together  upon 
the  mountainside,  that  when  he  is  set  they 
may  gather  before  him.  He  calls  them  from 
the  labor  union;  he  calls  them  from  the  or- 
ganizations of  their  employers.  Over  against 
the  rule  of  gold  he  puts  the  Golden  Rule.  He 
tells  the  Christian  business  man  that  he  cannot 
serve  God  and  mammon.  ''  But  I  say  unto 
you.  Love  one  another  even  as  I  have  loved 
you."  Your  business  is  not  simply  to  buy  in 
the  cheapest  and  sell  in  the  highest  market. 


140     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

Your  aim  in  life  is  not  simply  to  work  the 
least  you  can  for  the  most  you  can  get.  So 
He  calls  them  together  and  tells  them  to 
kneel  down,  closely  touching  one  another, 
to  lift  their  eyes  to  heaven  and  say  to- 
gether with  him,  "  Our  Father."  He  passes 
out  from  this  scene.  He  meets  the  Pharisai- 
cal men  of  human  privileges  who  have  not 
attended  the  gathering.  He  points  his  finger 
at  them  and  says,  "  Ye  bind  heavy  burdens 
upon  men,  and  will  not  so  much  as  touch  one 
of  them  with  your  fingers."  The  sovereign 
Christ  is  the  final  arbiter  of  the  industrial 
order. 

Jesus'  most  significant  method  we  have  yet 
to  see.  While  his  words  relate  thus  to  bodies 
of  men  who  have  come  together  under  the 
natural  associations  of  human  interests,  his 
words  are  always  spoken  directly  to  the  indi- 
vidual. He  realizes  that  both  the  social  and 
the  industrial  order  are  made  up  of  men  and 
women.  So  he  went  about  to  men  and 
women.  He  said  most  of  his  profoundest 
words  to  but  twelve  men.  Yet  witness  the 
realization  of   his  prophecy,  fulfilling   itself 


SOVEREIGNTY  OF  CHRIST      141 

for  now  twenty  centuries,  that  they  should 
be  the  salt  and  leaven  of  the  earth. 

The  supreme  question  of  human  life  is  that 
of  the  personal  relation  of  the  individual  to 
Christ.  Who,  in  these  two  thousand  years, 
have  done  the  most  to  bring  men  to  his  feet? 
The  framers  of  the  creeds?  They  have  done 
much,  and  yet,  "  Their  little  systems  "  had 
^^  their  day;  they  "  had  '^  their  day  and  ceased 
to  be."  The  theorists  of  social  reform?  They 
have  done  much,  but  it  has  been  fragmentary 
and  transient.  In  the  industrial  order,  the 
organizations  of  labor?  No  doubt  they  have 
accomplished  a  great  deal  for  the  uplifting 
of  men. 

But  more,  infinitely  more,  has  come  from 
the  perennial  power  of  simple  personalities 
who  have  been  constantly  shedding  Christ's 
spirit  about  them.  Jesus  saw  these  same 
dreadful  problems.  They  were  worse  in  his 
day.  He  met  them  by  sending  out  twelve 
disciples.  He  is  meeting  them  to-day  in  the 
same  way.  The  sole  hope  of  the  world  is  to 
make  men  disciples  of  Jesus.  He  is  waiting, 
as  his  parents  waited  in  the  inn,  to  find  room 


142     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

in  the  social  and  industrial  realms  of  life.  He 
finds  room  as  men  get  him  in  their  hearts. 

I  said  these  things  one  day  in  conversation 
in  the  office  of  a  great  business  man.  After 
I  had  done,  he  smiled  benignly  and  said,  "  My 
young  brother,  your  ideals  are  fine,  but  there 
is  no  place  for  them  in  business."  Christ  is 
waiting  to  find  room  in  that  man's  business, 
and  he  will  find  it  when  he  finds  it  in  that 
man's  heart.  The  New  Jerusalem  of  a  better 
human  order  must  descend  out  of  heaven.  If 
we  look  for  a  city  that  hath  foundations,  its 
builder  and  maker  is  God,  its  ruler  is  Christ. 
The  Infinite  is  the  author  and  the  creator,  and 
he  must  be  the  finisher  of  the  moral  order. 
Jesus  Christ,  his  Son,  is  the  master  workman 
on  this  earth. 

The  solution  of  all  human  problems  is  the 
answer  of  religion.  There  is  no  religion  known 
to  man  higher  than  our  Christian  faith.  The 
solemn  questions  of  society,  the  serious  con- 
ditions of  industry,  with  its  bitterness  and 
hate,  simply  await  the  second  coming  of  the 
Son  of  man  through  his  disciples.  The  world 
to-day  is  full  of  Bethesda  pools  and  of  men 


SOVEREIGNTY  OF  CHRIST      143 

I 
waiting  for  a  Christ  in  the  form  of  a  disciple 
to  help  them  in.     The  whole  creation  groaneth 
and  travaileth  in  pain  together  until  men  shall 
see  the  vision  of  Mount  Hermon  and  hear  the  j 

voice  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  1 

"  O  Saul!  it  shall  be  j 

A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee ;  a  man  like  to  me  ] 

Thou  shalt  love  and  be  loved  by  forever.  1 

A  Hand  like  this  hand  j 

Shall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee,  j 

See  the  Christ  stand!  "  I 

There   is  no  other  name,  no  other  name,  S 

given  under  heaven  or  among  men  whereby 
the  world  can  be  saved.  And  the  sovereignty 
of  Jesus  Christ  is  the  simple  reign  of  human 
love.  "  But  I  say  unto  you  "  ;  "  While  he 
was  yet  speaking  .  .  .  behold,  a  voice  out 
of  the  cloud"   said,    ^'This  is  my  beloved  j 

Son  .  .  .  hear  ye  him.''  ; 


The  Spirit  of  God 


Nevertheless  I  tell  you  the  truth:  It  is  expedient 
for  you  that  I  go  away ;  for  if  I  go  not  away,  the  Com- 
forter will  not  come  unto  you.  —  John  16:  7. 

But  the  Comforter,  even  the  Holy  Spirit  .  .  .  shall 
teach  you  all  things.  —  John  I4:  26. 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   GOD 


In  relation  to  our  conception  of  the  revela- 
tion of  the  Infinite  in  the  order  of  nature  the 
two  great  discoveries  in  modern  science  are: 
the  extension  of  the  universe  in  space,  and  its 
extension  in  time.  Coincident  with  these  is 
our  resultant  discovery  of  the  law  of  con- 
tinuous progression. 

Likewise,  in  our  comprehension  of  the 
revelation  of  the  Infinite  in  the  moral  and 
spiritual  order,  the  revealment  of  moral  and 
spiritual  truth,  and  the  molding  of  human  life 
by  divine  ideals,  the  field  of  spiritual  vision 
is  wonderfully  enlarged  by  these  discoveries. 
Thus  science  has  been  the  handmaid  and  the 
servant  of  religion. 

The  question  of  divine  revelation  is  a  much 
larger  one  than  it  would  have  been  con- 
sidered a  century,  a  half  century,  or  even 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  To  define  the 
contents  of  revelation  is  a  much  more  difficult 
task  than  the  religious  teachers  of  the  ages 

147 


148     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

have  conceived  it  to  be.  We  are  dealing  with 
the  revelation  of  an  infinite  being,  with  an 
infinitude  of  time  and  space  before  him  and 
with  an  infinite  love  which  will  eternally 
constrain  him  to  seek  to  fill  that  time  and 
space  with  his  own  goodness.  Our  attempt 
to  define  the  contents  of  the  revelation,  from 
one  point  of  view,  is  thus  to  define  the  inde- 
finable, to  state  the  limits  of  the  boundless. 

On  the  side  of  man,  however,  there  are 
limitations  to  his  vision  of  this  revelation,  and 
thus,  for  him,  it  is  contained,  and  may,  in  a 
measure,  be  defined.  Yet,  even  then,  the 
history  of  the  race,  now  extended,  by  the  di- 
vine discoveries  of  science,  far  back  into  the- 
ages  in  time,  and  far  out  beyond  the  bounds 
of  any  race  of  people  in  space,  gives  us  a  large 
and  glorious  area  and  makes  us  cautious  in 
our  efforts  to  determine  and  define  upon  the 
side  of  man. 

The  tendency  of  modern  thought  is  to  find 
the  Infinite,  as  inspiration  and  spiritual 
force,  in  every  place  where  the  heart  of  man 
beats,  and  to  recognize  that  the  revelation  is 
defined  only  by  the  limits  of  human  ability 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  149 

or  willingness  to  witness  the  vision,  and  that 
it  is  determined  only  by  the  stage  of  human 
moral  progress.  In  stating  the  human  forms 
which  contain  the  revelation,  we  must  aim  to 
give  the  widest  content  and  to  cover  the  most 
we  can.  And  we  feel,  after  our  attempt  to 
thus  define  without  omission,  that  we  have 
not  exhausted  by  our  definition,  and  that  we 
have  been  attempting,  after  all,  to  discover 
the  limits  of  the  illimitable. 

It  has  been  this  feeling  that  has  brought 
about  the  transition  in  our  emphasis  from 
doctrines  of  Biblical  inspiration,  of  the  in- 
carnation in  a  solitary  person  and  the  re- 
ligious ownership  of  a  single  institution,  to 
the  larger  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  whose 
work  includes  all  these  and  is  not  bound  by 
any  one  or  all  of  them. 

These  discoveries  of  an  infinite  moral  uni- 
verse, knowing  neither  space  nor  time,  have 
brought  us  to  this  larger  doctrine  of  the 
Spirit.  Thus  it  is  that  science  has  helped  us 
to  larger  and  better  things  in  faith,  and  we 
have  made  the  further  great  discovery  that 
there  is  no  contradiction  between  the  two. 


150     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

It  may  be  said  that  we  should  avoid  nega- 
tions and  only  give  the  direct  and  positive 
assertions  for  which  the  human  heart  awaits 
the  utterance  of  the  prophet.  But  I  am 
writing  for  the  discriminating  and  discerning, 
and  to  such  the  affirmation  is  often  best  re- 
vealed by  the  negation  of  its  opposite,  through 
their  knowledge  of  the  inevitable  law  of 
contrast. 

If  the  infinite  revelation  is  bounded  by 
neither  time  nor  space,  then  it  is  only  limited 
on  the  part  of  man,  as  a  whole,  by  the  limits 
of  extent  to  which  he  fills,  has  filled  and  will 
fill  time  and  space.  This  being  true,  it  is 
certain,  to  begin  with,  that  religious  revela- 
tion cannot  be  confined  to  a  book  or  to  any 
collection  of  books,  that  does  not  at  least 
include  every  utterance  of  the  human  heart 
on  the  remotest  moral  theme.  For  such  a 
book,  or  such  a  collection  of  books,  is  limited 
by  a  space  and  time  that  are  less  than  those 
which  have  been  occupied  by  the  collective 
life  of  man.  This  is  not  to  say,  however,  be 
it  noted,  that  a  book  is  not  a  revelation.  It 
is  at  best,  however,  but  a  single  illustration, 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  151 

or  an  epitome,  of  the  larger  revelation  ever 
going  on  in  the  larger  time  and  space  outside 
its  limit,  a  revelation  which  thus  began  before 
the  Book,  which  went  on  in  larger  measure 
while  the  Book  was  being  written,  and  which 
continued  after  the  Book  was  closed.  Reve- 
lation thus  cannot  be  limited  to  the  Book  we 
call  the  Bible,  even  though  it  were  an  errorless 
book. 

To  proceed  further,  our  thought  has  passed 
beyond  that  doctrine  of  the  mcarnation  which 
confines  the  revelation  to  a  single  person,  or 
to  persons,  until  we  have  included  every 
human  soul.  It  is  true,  I  think,  that  Christ 
alone  of  all  human  beings  beheld  the  sum 
total  of  the  moral  perfection  of  the  Infinite, 
and  certainly  no  other  whom  we  know  has 
ever  perfectly  embodied  it. 

But  again,  we  have  here,  at  most,  but  an  il- 
lustration, or  an  epitome,  of  the  larger  incarna- 
tion which  has  touched  every  human  soul  that 
ever  lived.  The  difference  is  in  degree  and 
not  in  kind,  except  in  so  far  as  a  difference  in 
degree  may  become  a  difference  in  kind. 
Our  vision  of  the  Christ  is  the  picture  in  min- 


152     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

iature  of  the  larger  incarnation.  The  historic 
Jesus  was  filled  with  God's  holy  spirit,  but 
he  did  not  exhaust  it,  and  he  himself  de- 
clared that  it  was  God's  universal  gift  to  all 
his  children.  Of  this  we  shall  treat  more 
fully  a  little  later  on. 

Still  further,  if  this  revelation  is  bounded 
by  neither  space  nor  time,  it  could  in  no  way 
be  confined  to  any  institution,  whether  it  be 
the  Church  of  Israel,  the  Apostolic  Council 
or  the  Church  of  Christ.  All  these,  again, 
are  but  epitomes  or  single  illustrations  of  the 
larger  revelation  which  went  on  before  them, 
which  was  contemporaneous  with  them  and 
of  which  they  were  but  a  part,  even  though  it 
were  the  larger  part. 

Thus  we  can  no  longer  confine  inspiration 
to  the  Bible,  the  incarnation  to  Christ  or 
religion  to  a  church. 

It  must  be  frankly  admitted,  also,  that  the 
clear  distinctions  which  once  existed,  or  were 
thought  to  exist,  between  a  natural  and  a 
supernatural  revelation  have  passed  away. 

As  we  have  seen,  it  has  been  our  discoveries 
of  the  truths  of  the  natural  order  that  have 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  153 

led  us  to  the  larger  truths  of  the  moral  and 
spiritual  order.  And  so,  as  evidences  of  a 
moral  revelation,  the  so-called  miracles  have 
gone.  The  believers  of  our  day  who  believe 
in  the  miracles  of  Jesus  beheve  in  them 
because  of  him  and  his  gospel.  They  do 
not  believe  in  him  and  his  gospel  because 
of  miracles.  A  contradiction,  or  a  marvel 
in  the  natural  order,  is  no  more  proof  or 
evidence  of  moral  principle  than  an  athlete's 
ability  to  lift  a  hitherto  unlifted  stone  is  proof 
that  he  is  a  holy  man. 

The  newer  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
witnesses  the  supernatural  in  all  moral  action 
and  operation,  and,  so  far  as  the  evidences  of 
a  moral  and  spiritual  revelation  are  con- 
cerned, miracles  in  the  physical  order  are, 
with  those  who  still  feel  under  obligation 
to  attempt  to  retain  a  place  for  them,  a  sort 
of  extra  ornament,  of  somewhat  doubtful 
value  even  as  such,  and  belief  in  them  is  at 
best  a  work  of  supererogation.  We  shall 
come,  with  Jesus,  to  consider  those  who  have 
the  larger  light  of  spiritual  truth,  and  before 
whose  faces  Jesus  shines ;  and  who  still  insist 


154     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

on  seeking  signs,  as  an  adulterous  and  evil 
generation. 

I  have  stated  these  things  in  the  form  of 
negation  because  it  is  necessary,  as  Christ 
declared,  to  destroy  the  older  temple  that  we 
may  erect  a  new  and  better  one  on  its  foun- 
dations.    It  is  expedient  that  these  go  away. 

It  must  be  admitted  that,  again  and  again, 
age  after  age,  men  have  been  possessed  with 
the  idea  that  at  last  they  had  gotten  divine 
truth  enclosed  and  finally  contained.  We 
feel  to-day,  however,  that  this  cannot  be 
possible  until  all  things  are  possible  to  man  as 
well  as  God.  The  fault  has  been  that  one 
or  two,  or  a  very  few,  of  the  methods  which 
were  designed  to  lead  men  to  faith  have 
themselves  become  the  objects  of  faith,  the 
means  became  the  end  and  the  partial  and 
temporary  were  conceived  of  as  if  complete 
and  eternal. 

The  modern  conception  of  the  immanence 
of  God  has  revealed  to  us  in  larger  measure 
the  spiritual  environment  of  man,  that  he 
lives,  not  in  an  arid  desert  with  only  its  occa- 
sional divine  oasis  of  Bible,  Church  and  mira- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  155 

cle,  but  that  he  may  find  God  on  every  hand, 
and  that  the  revelation  of  this  God  is  not  con- 
fined to  any  book,  to  any  historic  people,  to 
any  single  person,  to  any  institution  or  to  any 
occasional  demonstrations,  indeed,  not  con- 
fined to  anything  that  is  limited  by  time  and 
space. 

This  is  not,  however,  be  it  noted,  to  deny 
those  supreme  differences  of  degree  which  are 
so  great  that  we  may,  for  our  convenience, 
call  them  differences  in  kind,  albeit  in  a  moral 
universe  whose  principle  is  unity  there  are, 
strictly  speaking,  no  such.  And  a  moral 
universe,  with  only  one  God,  must  be  a  moral 
universe  of  unity. 

These  valid  and  necessary  distinctions, 
however,  must  neither  deny  nor  obscure  the 
eternal  truth  that,  ever  since  the  dawn  of 
moral  consciousness  in  man,  there  has  been 
an  ever-present,  continuous  and  personally 
immediate  revelation  to  every  human  soul. 

The  Rev.  Edward  M.  Chapman,  in  his 
illuminating  work,  ''  The  Dynamic  of  Chris- 
tianity," has  shown  us  that,  again  and  again, 
the  very  men  who  have  been  deemed  the 


156     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

deniers  of  truth  have  left  their  heritage  of 
truth,  and  the  Gnostic  and  Montanist  gave 
to  their  persecutors  a  doctrine  which,  while 
it  has  been  too  much  obscured,  has  had  its 
implicit  life  in  the  inner  consciousness  of 
Church  and  Christian,  namely,  the  possibility 
of  continued  and  immediate  revelation  of  the 
truth  to  men,  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  through  a 
multitude  of  varied  approaches.  Nor  has 
this  Spirit  come  to  man  from  a  far-off  God 
who  dwelt  without,  but  is  the  flaming  up  of  a 
divine  within. 

This  being  true,  to  permit  any  form  of  reve- 
lation to  rule  further  discovery  of  the  Infinite 
out  of  court  is  simply  to  limit  the  presence  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  and  thus  to  limit  the  opera- 
tions of  the  Infinite,  and  the  Infinite  himself, 
in  time  and  space. 

The  third  modern  discovery  of  which  we 
spoke,  the  resultant  and  the  corollary  of  the 
other  two,  is  the  doctrine  of  the  eternal  prog- 
ress of  this  revelation  of  the  Spirit.  It 
illuminates  Pascal's  saying  that  "  humanity 
is  a  man  who  is  to  live  forever  and  learn  with- 
out  ceasing."    Thus,   as   Sabatier  declares, 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  157 

from  this  point  of  view,  the  moderns  are  the 
ancients,  since  they  have  a  longer  experience 
behind  them.  The  ancients,  on  the  contrary, 
are  the  children  in  truth,  because  they  came 
in  the  early  ages  of  the  world.  Jesus  himself 
explicitly  declared  that  he  was  not  the  ulti- 
mate object  of  men's  faith,  and  the  beautiful 
legend  of  the  rending  of  the  veil,  while  he 
hung  upon  the  cross,  is  a  sublime  picture  of 
the  Holy  place  as  accessible  to  every  human 
soul. 

Jesus  gave  to  the  world  a  new  Book.  He 
gave  to  the  world  himself.  He  gave  to  the 
world  a  Church.  But  his  supreme  gift  was 
the  consciousness  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which 
should  ultimately  guide  men  into  all  truth, 
and  who  was  necessary,  in  order  that  they 
should  behold  and  appropriate  him.  He 
was  the  revealer  of  the  revelation,  but  it  was 
not  in  the  form  of  a  set  of  doctrines.  It  was 
something  eternally  living,  the  constant  opera- 
tion of  the  Spirit  of  God  upon  the  human 
consciousness. 

Thus,  the  center  of  gravity  of  the  religious 
life,  variously  conceived  as  a  book,  person, 


158     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

institution,  and  formula,  is  changed  from  these 
things  which  are  without  to  something 
eternally  within.  The  supreme  gift  of  Jesus 
was  the  principle  of  the  fraternal  equality, 
the  spiritual  independence  of  God's  children, 
grounded  upon  their  filial  relation  to  the 
Father  to  whom  they  were  boimd  by  the  ever- 
present  influences  of  the  Spirit. 

Christian  revelation  is  thus  not  confined  to 
a  closed  canon,  to  a  stereotyped  letter,  to  a 
divine  person,  to  a  divine  confession;  but  is 
only  contained  in  the  immanence  and  contin- 
uity of  that  Spirit  in  the  soul  who  inspired 
the  writers  of  the  book,  who  bears  witness  to 
the  truth  of  the  book,  who  makes  the  institu- 
tion and  the  person  themselves  divine.  Thus 
did  Christ  declare  that  the  only  unpardonable 
sin  was,  not  even  to  stumble  at  himself,  but 
the  sin  of  denying  to  one's  self,  or  of  denying 
to  any  human  soul,  the  influences  of  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

We  may  unhesitatingly  affirm  that  we  have 
emerged  from  deism,  from  tritheism,  into  a 
glorious  spiritual  pantheism.  Not  a  materi- 
alistic pantheism,  which  is  both  the  exagge- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  159 

ration  and  the  limitation  of  truth,  but  the 
pantheism  of  the  divine  immanence  in  human- 
ity, without  any  confines  of  mediation. 

It  declares,  as  Martineau  says,  that  "  divine 
guidance  has  never,  and  nowhere,  failed  to 
men,  nor  has  it  ever,  in  the  most  essential 
things,  largely  differed  amongst  them.  The 
veil  falls  from  the  shadowed  face  of  all  ex- 
ternal authority  as  such,  and  the  directing 
love  of  the  all-holy  God  shines  forth."  Under 
such  a  conception,  we  may  behold,  all  along 
the  pathway  of  life,  sacred  shrines  like  those 
upon  some  Alpine  road. 

As  one  star  differs  from  another  in  glory, 
but  all  are  set  throughout  the  natural  universe 
by  God,  and  are  his  beacons  of  the  night,  so, 
while  the  moral  lights  of  men  which  guide 
them  on  their  way  have  differed  in  their 
splendor,  they  all  reveal  the  guidance  of  the 
Father.  To  say,  as  men  have  said,  that 
confessions  and  institutions  may  define  the 
revelation  is  to  set  bounds  to  moral  progress, 
and  thus  to  close  the  way  to  heaven. 

Our  intellectual  forms  of  faith  are  but  at- 
tempts to  express,  in  the  language  of  the  mind, 


160     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

the  feelings  of  the  human  hearty  to  search  out 
the  unsearchable  and  to  express  the  inex- 
pressible. All  such  are  good  and  helpful,  but 
they  can  never  be  perfect  until  the  knowledge 
of  man  is  equal  to  the  knowledge  of  God. 

Schleiermacher,  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
prophets,  gave  us  a  new  order  of  thought  in 
declaring  the  religion  of  the  heart  to  be  the 
irreducible  fact  of  experience  which  is  ante- 
rior to  any  religious  theory  or  form  of  doctrine 
which  can  only  imperfectly  express  it.  The 
common  error  of  both  rationalist  and  super- 
naturalist  was  in  considering  faith  as  a 
form  of  doctrine  which  one  thought  might  be 
deduced  from  reason  as  a  purely  intellectual 
operation,  and  which  the  other  believed  to 
have  fallen,  at  a  given  point  in  time,  from 
heaven.  And  both  rationalist  and  believer 
came  to  reduce  religion  and  revelation  to  the 
contents  of  an  intellectual  operation. 

The  newer  order  of  thought  is  that  man 
receives  life,  and  then,  in  trying  to  express 
that  life  in  words,  makes  his  own  belief.  This 
is  not  to  deny  the  reaction  of  belief  upon 
life.    But  the  life  is  ever  larger  than  any  one 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  161 

expression  of  it  —  indeed,  than  all  expres- 
sions. The  attempt  to  interpret  the  life 
has  been  treated  as  though  it  were  the  life 
which  it  imperfectly  expresses. 

Hence  all  dogmas,  doctrines  and  ortho- 
doxies in  relation  to  Scripture,  to  Christ  and 
the  religious  life  of  man  are  but  the  imper- 
fect intellectual  expressions  of  the  common 
religious  consciousness  of  the  race.  Thus  no 
one  man,  no  body  of  men,  can  give  them 
perfect  expression.  Such  could  only  be 
gained  by  bringing  together  the  religious  con- 
sciousness of  every  human  being  of  every  race. 
In  the  light  of  such  an  infinite  task  how  mar- 
velous has  been  the  intellectual  and  moral 
self-sufficiency,  not  only  of  popes,  but  of 
councils  of  religious  men!  Thus  neither 
Bible  nor  Church  can  be  a  principle  or  first 
cause,  but  only  partial  consequence  and  par- 
tial effect. 

Viewed  thus,  all  human  truth  and  goodness 
are  the  consequences  of  revelation.  It  all 
springs  from  one  source,  and  is  instinct  with 
one  life  —  the  life  of  the  Spirit.  Every  hu- 
man deed  of  love,  every  noble  impulse,  all 


162     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

self-sacrificing  service,  is  but  this  Spirit  of 
God  clothing  itself  with  human  personality, 
and  all  moral  goodness  is  divine. 

The  result  of  this  view  is  momentous,  in  that 
it  leaves  no  such  thing  as  orthodoxy,  except 
as  Sabatier  defines  it  —  the  orthodoxy  which 
is  officially  consecrated  by  immediate  and 
temporary  success.  It  transfers  the  em- 
phasis of  our  evangelism  from  the  acceptance 
of  superimposed  intellectual  formulas  to  the 
moral  action  which  is  the  resultant  of  the 
inner  life  of  the  Spirit. 

The  larger  aims  of  the  Protestant  Refor- 
mation are  only  just  being  realized.  The 
larger  ideal  which  it  saw  by  the  Spirit  was 
the  transfer  from  the  religion  of  a  body  politic 
to  the  religion  of  an  immanent  moral  force  in- 
teriorized  within  the  soul — the  principle  of  the 
autonomy  of  the  Christian  conscience.  Un- 
fortunately, the  older  principle  did  not  die,  and 
we  lived,  for  a  long  time,  under  the  halting 
substitution  of  the  external  authority  of  the 
revelation  of  Scripture  for  that  of  the  Church. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  controversy 
concerning    the   ultimate    authority   of   the 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  163 

Bible,  Church  or  reason  has  been  settled  in 
favor  of  the  reason,  which  itself  is  called  to 
pass  judgment  on  both  Bible  and  Church. 
We  must  go  further  still,  however.  Human 
reason  is  the  gift  of  God  and  must  be  guided 
by  the  Infinite  mind.  We  have  enlarged  our 
conception  of  revelation  and  have  come  to 
consider  it  as  the  action  of  God  upon  both 
mind  and  heart  through  the  Holy  Spirit. 
The  conception  of  the  ultimate  authority  of 
the  Scripture  is  most  emphatically  disavov/ed 
by  the  Scripture  itself.  The  Fourth  Gospel 
explicitly  denies  that  inspired  utterance 
ceased  when  the  pen  of  its  writer  was  laid 
down.  The  very  doctrine  of  inspiration  in 
this  Gospel  could  be  confined  to  no  age  or 
apostolic  circle,  neither  in  kind  nor  in  degree. 
The  free  and  unhampered  use  of  the  Old 
Testament  by  Jesus  was  a  freedom  which 
he  bequeathed  to  his  disciples  for  Testaments 
both  Old  and  New,  or  any  other  book. 

The  view  of  the  Gospel  of  John  is  that  the 
religion  of  the  Spirit  existed  before  a  single 
book  of  the  Bible  was  written,  and  it  still 
would  have  existed  even  if  those  books  had 


164     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

disappeared.  Our  modern  reverent,  so-called 
criticism  of  the  Scripture  is  simply  the  doc- 
trine that  prayer  and  the  seeking  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  must  accompany  the  reading  of  the 
Bible,  in  order  that  we  may  rightly  divide  the 
word  of  truth. 

The  Church  has  disproved  itself  as  ulti- 
mate authority.  The  alleged  warfare  be- 
tween theology  and  science  has,  as  Chapman 
says,  really  been  the  ^^  conflict  between  insti- 
tutionalism  and  science,"  and  the  spoils  of 
battle  are  at  least  equal.  While  the  Church 
is,  and  always  has  been,  a  conservator  and 
mediator  of  the  essential  truth,  it  is,  unfortu- 
nately, as  a  body,  still  loath  to  admit  that  the 
ultimate  energy  of  the  philosopher  and  the 
resident  forces  of  the  scientist  and  the  im- 
manent spirit  of  the  theologian  are  but  dif- 
ferent terms  of  revelation,  while  the  enlight- 
ened Christian  conscience  sees  clearly  that 
they  are. 

Those  who  shrink  from  accepting  the  doc- 
trine of  the  ultimate  authority  of  the  revela- 
tion to  the  individual  human  soul,  through 
the  Holy  Spirit,  fall  back  from  their  defences 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  165 

of  infallibility  in  the  Bible  and  say  that,  at 
least,  then,  Christ  is  the  ultimate  authority. 
The  difficulty  here  is  that  it  serves  little  for  us 
to  invoke  the  infallibility  of  Christ,  when  the 
infallibility  of  the  Gospels  has  been  sacrificed 
to  historic  criticism.  The  teachings  of  Jesus, 
moreover,  so  far  as  the  letter  is  concerned, 
were  limited  by  his  age  and  environment. 
The  reason  of  man,  under  the  guidance  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  is  called  for  to  interpret 
their  principles  in  order  to  apply  them  to 
another  age  and  surrounding.  Jesus  him- 
self carefully  told  his  disciples,  not  so  much 
that  they  were  to  learn  what  he  said,  as  to 
find  for  themselves  the  truth  which  he  taught. 
They  were  to  share  his  piety  and  to  behold 
with  their  own  eyes  his  vision  of  the  Father. 
The  Church  has  not  followed  his  teaching 
when  it  has  made  him  the  object,  instead  of 
the  vehicle  and  source  of  religion,  and,  chang- 
ing him  from  the  author  into  the  end  of  faith, 
has  many  times  put  him  in  the  place  of  God 
rather  than  as  one  who  was  to  lead  them  to 
God. 

Thus  conceiving  of  the  contents  of  reve- 


166     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

lation  as  being  nothing  less  than  the  imma- 
nent Holy  Spirit  in  the  life  of  man  throughout 
all  the  time  and  space  which  he  occupies,  it 
appears  that,  while  the  Bible  was  being  writ- 
ten to  declare  the  revelation  that  came  to 
some  priests  and  prophets,  the  same  revela- 
tion was  being  witnessed  by  other  priests  and 
prophets,  and  also  by  those  who  lived  before 
and  those  who  lived  after. 

Under  this  view,  the  incarnation  is  not 
only  an  historical  event,  but  a  universal  and 
continuous  process.  Humanity  was  never 
left  alone  without  the  God  whose  child  it  is. 
Its  theophanies  have  been  in  human  forms, 
and  theophanies  in  human  lives  did  not  be- 
gin at  Bethlehem  or  end  at  Calvary.  The 
angel  came  in  and  said  unto  her,  "  Hail,  thou 
that  art  highly  favored,  the  Lord  is  with 
thee.  .  .  .  And  the  angel  answered  and  said 
unto  her,  The  Holy  Spirit  shall  come  upon 
thee  and  the  power  of  the  Most  High  shall 
overshadow  thee:  wherefore  also  the  holy 
thing  which  is  begotten  shall  be  called  the  Son 
of  God."  The  first  mark  of  the  incarnation 
was  the  stamping  of  motherhood  with   its 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  167 

divineness.  Page  upon  page  of  learned  dis- 
quisition has  been  written  to  interpret  this, 
and  most  of  them  have  never  touched  its 
deeper  meaning.  Is  the  story  true?  To  ask 
the  question  is  to  show  that  we  have  missed 
its  deepest  meaning.  Over  every  mother,  if 
she  will  but  look  and  listen,  is  the  angel. 
Upon  her  is  the  shadow  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

The  Son  of  man  is  not  a  picture  to  be  looked 
at  by  the  sons  of  men  and  worshiped.  He 
is  the  actual  of  all  the  holy  prophecies  in  men. 
Not  simply  to  behold  him,  but  to  recover  his 
unutterable  vision  for  ourselves  is  the  loftiest 
aim  of  human  heart  and  mind.  To  see  his 
God,  to  grasp  his  interpretation  of  our  own 
souls,  are  the  supreme  achievements  set  before 
the  race.  His  consciousness,  so  far  as  gained, 
is  its  superlative  possession.  This  Son  of  God 
is  likewise  Son  of  man.  He  has  revealed  not 
only  God  to  men,  but  God  in  man. 

Humanity  can  never  gain  its  end  by  gazing 
at  a  portrait  of  the  Master.  It  must  appre- 
hend his  mind  and  gain  his  spirit  and  his  life. 
Without  the  immanence  of  Christ,  his  heavenly 
transcendence  can  have  no  vital  meaning  for 


168     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

the  sons  of  men.  And  as  his  actual  con- 
trast between  himself  and  men  is  an  eternal 
ground  of  faith,  so  must  his  essential  kin- 
ship with  the  race  be  its  eternal  ground  of 
hope. 

The  actual  contrast  between  the  Son  of 
God  and  the  sons  of  men  is  identical  with  the 
moral  difference  between  the  finite  and  the 
Infinite.  Then  must  as  well  the  identity  of 
the  sons  of  men  with  Jesus  be  the  ground  of 
their  consciousness  as  the  children  of  God. 
The  incarnation  was  in  man  then,  that  its 
presence  in  men  might  be  perfectly  revealed. 
This  was  Christ's  ideal  for  his  disciples,  and 
the  eternally  enduring  evolution  of  the  race  is 
first  to  apprehend  and  then  to  gain  in  partial, 
but  in  growing,  measure  the  mind,  the  heart, 
and  the  life  of  the  eternal  Son. 

This,  then,  becomes  the  deeper  meaning 
of  the  incarnation;  the  witness  of  divinity 
within  our  humble  life,  touched  by  the  divine 
in  Christ  to  bring  it  to  fulfilment.  It  is  the 
pledge  and  the  interpretation  of  God's  eternal 
life  within  his  children.  The  transcendence 
of  the  Master,  by  his  iromanence,  becomes 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  169 

the  pledge  of  the  transcendence  of  our  present 
selves. 

To  apprehend  the  moral  magnitude  and 
contemplate  the  spiritual  force  of  Jesus  is  a 
sovereign  desire  of  the  mind  of  man,  and  to 
appropriate  his  life,  the  loftiest  endeavor  of  a 
human  soul.  As  Son  of  man  and  Son  of  God, 
the  witness  and  the  earnest  of  the  heavenly 
childhood  of  the  race,  he  is  the  sovereign  pos- 
session of  mankind.  But  to  gain  the  view 
and  the  interpretation  of  the  Christ,  which 
the  Gospel  writers  give  us,  is  not  enough.  To 
gain  any  view  of  Christ  is  not  enough.  The 
unceasing  effort  of  the  human  mind,  its  lofti- 
est endeavor,  is  to  see  the  things  he  saw  and 
feel  the  feelings  that  he  felt,  —  that  we  might 
do  this,  he  left  us  the  bequest  of  the  Holy 
Spirit. 

So,  while  bibles  are  both  read  and  written, 
while  creeds  and  confessions  are  both  made 
and  re-made,  while  institutions  seek  to  con- 
serve, embody  and  reveal  God's  truth,  no  one 
of  these,  nor  all  of  these  together,  can  define 
or  contain  within  themselves  the  revelation  of 
the  Infinite  to  men. 


170     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

It  comes  in  many  ways.  It  is  contained  in 
myriads  of  forms.  It  is  expressed  and  lives 
its  life  on  every  hand.  It  takes  the  form  of 
many  holy  books  and  many  sacred  institu- 
tions, but  it  is  confined  within  no  separate 
sphere  of  action.  It  is  the  life  of  God,  through 
his  Holy  Spirit,  taking  the  form  to-day  of  a 
righteous  civic  consciousness,  as  the  revela- 
tion comes  and  reveals  the  truth,  justice  and 
righteousness  against  the  present  background 
of  fraud,  injustice  and  unholy  bribes.  It 
may  take  the  form  of  burning,  righteous  pro- 
test against  accepting,  in  the  name  of  God  and 
Christ,  imholy  gains,  which  are  unlawful  for  a 
sacred  treasury,  because  they  are  the  price  of 
blood. 

The  revelation  sheds  its  light  upon  the  host 
of  himaan  beings  who  toil  by  day  and  night 
for  the  support  in  luxury  of  Dives  and  his 
friends,  and  its  light  shed  upon  a  labor 
union  may  transform  it  to  a  holy  institution. 
The  revelation  may  take  the  form  of  the 
vision  of  sacred  brotherhood  against  the 
somber  background  of  despotism,  cruelty, 
hate,  and  imbridled  lust,  and  may  shine  from 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  GOD  171 

America  on  far-off  Russia  or  the  woeful 
hell  of  Turkey;  and  the  impulse  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  may  arm  the  warships  and  consecrate, 
in  the  name  of  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy 
Ghost,  their  every  gun,  under  its  other  names 
of  human  brotherhood  and  justice.  It  lives 
in  every  human  deed  of  righteousness  and 
love. 

Everywhere  the  Holy  Spirit  does  his  work. 
To  write  a  bible,  to  experience  an  incarnation, 
to  possess  a  sacred  altar,  with  its  holy  fire,  are 
the  privileges  of  every  human  soul.  A  bible 
writ  by  other  men  is  not  enough.  The  incar- 
nation as  an  historic  fact  in  a  single  person 
must  be  as  well  a  universal  impartation. 
No  formulary  of  a  council  can  express  for 
any  human  soul  its  own  experience.  No  age 
can  do  it  for  another  age.  No  church  can 
take  the  place  of  the  Holy  of  holies,  where  the 
human  soul,  in  the  inviolable  solitude  of  its 
own  personality,  stands  face  to  face  with  the 
divine  reality.  The  burning  bush  is  ever  at 
the  feet  of  every  man.  Nature,  the  Bible, 
the  Church,  the  Christ,  —  all  these  and  count- 
less other  media,  varying  in  their  measure,  are, 


172     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

by  the  Spirit,  the  means  of  revelation,  but  no 
one  of  them  exhausts  it. 

This  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The 
hairs  of  every  human  head  are  numbered,  and 
there  are  as  many  revelations  as  there  are 
human  souls.  The  content  of  revelation  is 
the  total  consciousness  of  God  in  all  the  human 
souls  from  the  beginnings  of  moral  conscious- 
ness in  man  to  the  very  present  moment. 

"  Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  he  hears. 
And  Spirit  with  spirit  can  meet  — 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing, 

And  nearer  than  hands  and  feet." 

It  is  expedient,  then,  that  Scripture  should 
confess  its  temporary  partialness;  that  the 
Church  should  feel  that  it  is  smaller  than  the 
kingdom;  that  men  should  look  for  spiritual 
visions  and  not  for  puzzling  signs;  that  creeds 
should  say,  The  truth  is  larger  than  us  all, 
and  truer. 

'^  Yea,"  says  the  Christ  himself,  "  it  is  ex- 
pedient for  you  that  I  go  away,  for  if  I  go  not 
away,  the  Spirit  will  not  come." 

Does  this  mean  that  every  book  is  a  Bible, 
every  man  a  Christ  and  every  human  insti- 


THE   SPIRIT  OF   GOD  173 

tution  a  Church?  No,  it  does  not  mean  that 
any  other  book  is  a  Bible,  any  other  being  a 
Christ,  or  any  other  body  a  holy  Church.  But 
it  does  mean  that  revelation  and  inspiration 
are  all-comprehending  moral  terms,  that  the 
incarnation  is  a  universal  process  and  that  the 
kingdom  of  God,  like  the  word  of  God,  knows 
no  limitations  of  time  and  space.  It  does  not 
dispose  of  all  objective  authority,  for  we  are 
bound  to  take  into  account,  not  only  the  Holy 
Spirit  as  it  speaks  to  us,  but  also  as  it  speaks 
to  other  men.  But  the  Holy  Spirit  within 
the  individual  soul  must  be  the  divider  and 
interpreter,  and  such  authority  is  not  an  im- 
position, but  is  itself  a  gift  of  the  Spirit.  Evo- 
lution is  both  an  imfolding  from  within  and 
an  infolding  from  without.  The  great  idea 
of  unity  does  not  deny  diversity.  Identity 
is  not  inconsistent  with  variety.  "  There  is 
one  glory  of  the  sun,  and  another  glory  of  the 
moon,  and  another  glory  of  the  stars;  for  one 
star  differeth  from  another  star  in  glory." 

Under  any  other  view  than  that  of  moral 
identity  and  unity  the  incarnation  is  mean- 
ingless.   There  can  never  be  attainableness 


174     THE  INFINITE  AFFECTION 

without  essential  unity  between  that  which 
is  and  that  which  is  to  be.  The  unity  and 
universaHty  of  revelation  are  essential  to  a 
moral  universe. 

Does  this  mean  a  lesser  bible?  No,  it 
only  means  that  the  Bible  is  the  means  and  not 
the  end  of  revelation.  Does  this  mean  that 
the  inner  circle  of  disciples  which  we  call  the 
Church  has  lost  its  individuality?  No,  it  only 
means  a  larger  Church  created  by  it.  Is  a 
superannuated  Christ  the  consequence  of  this 
mode  of  thought?  No,  it  remains  true  that 
there  is  one  Bible,  that  the  twelve  disciples 
are  still  existent  as  an  inner  circle  of  the  Sev- 
enty.    Jesus  Christ  is  sovereign  and  eternal. 

"  It  is  expedient  for  you  that  I  go  away." 
"  But  I  come  again,  and  will  receive  you  unto 
myself;  that  where  I  am,  there  ye  maybe  also." 
He  it  is  who  leads  his  own  beyond  the  outer 
Gentile  court  of  institutions,  beyond  the 
mediating  sanctuaries,  to  the  very  Holy  of 
holies,  where  the  individual  soul  in  the  in- 
violable solitude  of  its  personality  stands 
face  to  face  with  the  divine  reality,  and  all  are 
there,  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost. 

Amen. 


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